Malmstrom AFB Missile/UFO Incident, March 1967

[Access Denied]

I am posting the following on behalf of James Carlson who is the son of one of the two officers involved in the Echo flight incident that Robert Salas claimed, and Robert Hastings is promoting, involved a UFO. James was involved in a debate with Hastings at ATS in this thread here…

Robert Hastings has a message for UFO non-believers.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread537468/pg1

For those interested in a short summary of James’ book and the issues raised, I recommend reading Tim Printy’s latest issue of SUNlite available here…

SUNlite Volume 2 Number 2: March-April 2010
http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite2_2.pdf

I have invited James to continue his debate here and I can also confirm that James has recently been in touch with retired Col. Walt Figel, the other officer involved in the incident with his father, and that Mr. Figel has essentially confirmed James’ interpretation of his recollection of the event. Mr. Hastings is already a member here and we hope to obtain an interview with Mr. Figel in the near future.

Tom

-----

Gentlemen, and Ladies,

Robert Hastings has made much of the fact that I have refused to interview his witness, Col. (Ret.) Walter Figel, Jr., regarding his recollections of the Echo Flight Incident on March 16, 1967. To be precise, he has written "I note first that James Carlson still refuses to call retired Col. Walt Figel, to hear from his own lips, as I did in October 2008, that while on alert as the DMCCC at Malmstrom's Echo Flight, in March 1967, he spoke with two individuals via the phone in the capsule--a missile maintenance team member and an arriving SAT team member--about a "large round object" that was hovering over one of the flight's LFs. James' father, Eric Carlson, lied to him some time ago--telling him that no UFOs were present when all 10 missiles dropped-off alert status--and so James has been slandering and libeling everyone who disputes that version of events ever since, Including one former MIMS tech whom I interviewed a few years ago." He stated as well: "So, James Carlson, rant on. If you ever find the courage to call Col. Figel please let me know. I will provide his phone number, as I first offered to do a year-and-a-half ago."

Frankly, I've never needed his assitance to contact Col. Figel -- I've managed to do so quite easily on my own. The fact that I have been reticent to discuss the matter in more detail has very little to do with cowardice. I have, in fact, contacted Col. Figel, but didn't feel that it would be very ethical to discuss in detail the event he recalls without securing first his complete cooperation, authority, and permission to do so. Having secured that this very evening, I am now prepared to discuss the matter in full. I can also add, very strongly, that my father never lied to me about anything, as Hastings claims, and that his recollections match exactly those of Col. Figel's. I've "slandered and libeled" nobody, and I can say with complete confidence today that both Robert Hastings and Robert Salas have knowingly mislead their entire audience into believing a lie they were well aware of in order to sell their books.

To begin with, Col. Figel does not believe in UFOs and does not believe that they were even remotely associated with the Echo Flight Incident, or any other equipment failures at Malmstrom AFB in 1967 (or any other year, for that matter). In one of his emails to me, he stated conclusively that "I am not a fan of Salas, Hastings, or the whole UFO crowd. I have never seen one and flatly don't believe they exist at all. I just want you to be clear of my position on UFOs. They make good science fiction - nothing more." In a discussion of Robert Salas and James Klotz's book "Faded Giant" and Robert Hastings' book "UFOs and Nukes", Col. Figel states unequivocably that "I have read both of their books. There are many inaccurate statements and events in the books. I have told them both that." Apparently, both authors ignored what Figel told them. In addition, he states that "Oscar Flight NEVER had any problems and Salas was NEVER involved in any of them at all." Now that's a pretty definitive statement to make in light of the categorical importance both authors have previously invested the testimony of Col. Figel with.

More specifically, Col. Walt Figel has definitively agreed with the scenario of events that I have outlined on numerous internet forums, including this one [not RU -AD], a scenario that shows exactly how laughable it is to believe that the "report" of a UFO received by Figel and my father could be anything other than a badly wrought joke made by junior enlisted military members in the course of establishing the status of the missiles at the silos they were encamped at. He states that NOBODY ever believed that UFOs were involved in this incident until Robert Salas came forward with his ridiculous and silly science fiction tale of interference from beyond the stars, and that he has told in no uncertain terms this very assessment to both Hastings and Salas. He is also as disgusted as I am and as every other citizen of this country should be at the systematic trashing of reputations these men have engaged in to no purpose whatsoever except to increase the sales of their inaccurate and fictional books -- destroying the reputations and decent memories of men like my father, MAJ (Ret.) Eric D. Carlson, the UFO Officer at Malmstrom AFB -- Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase -- the Condon Committee UFO investigator Roy Craig, and everybody who was ever involved with the investigation of this singular event in USAF history.

Let me be very clear, especially as Robert Hastings in particular has been saying the most sickening things -- things that cannot be supported in any way whatsoever by anybody: the Echo Flight Incident did not involve UFOs. It was a comparatively mediocre electronic incident that Robert Hastings and Robert Salas have manufactured in order to sell books. Col. Walt Figel concurs in this estimation, and admits as well that he has told both individuals that their versions of this incident are not only inaccurate, but are simply works of fiction. In light of these revelations from Col. Figel, and as well as in anticipation of future contacts with ex-missileers more involved in the actual investigation of the Echo Flight Incident that he has very kindly given me, I will be updating the book that I have written "Americans, Credulous - or - The Arrogance of Congenital Liars & Other Character Defects - Establishing the Truth Behind the Echo Flight UFO Incident of March 16, 1967". As always, it can be read or downloaded for free at http://www.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Amer ... es-Carlson -- please tell your friends. Investigating the unknown is always an appreciated undertaking and always should be, but lying about your findings, destroying the reputations of those who can no longer defend themselves, and proposing as fact easily provable fictions and deceits for no other reason than the sale of your books is and ought to continue to be looked upon as unethical, dishonest, and criminally stupid, regardless of the source.

Since I am very much aware of the strategies undertaken by Robert Hastings in particular regarding matters like this that question his veracity, honesty, motivations and ethics, I would like to assure the members of this forum [not RU -AD] that I have no intentions whatsoever of conducting any sort of debate regarding these matters on this forum. Robert Hastings is welcome to respond to me privately at any time, but if he wishes to conduct a campaign of disinformation and deceit, he must do so within the confines of another forum entirely. Frankly, most people are absolutely sick of his dishonest arguments and intellect, as well as his habit of countering facts with a continuous helter-skelter of nonsense and trivia. I will not respond to Hastings at all on any forum that is not willing to put up with his crap, but I did think that these revelations were substantive enough to interest many members of this community. The fact of the matter is, every member of the crew that was on duty when the Echo Flight missiles were taken offline by an electronic noise pulse on March 16, 1967 are adamant that no UFOs were involved, no actual UFOs were ever reported to them, and they have repeatedly said the same to both Robert Hastings and Robert Salas. A poor joke was made at the time, as I've delineated recently in this forum, and Col. Figel confirms that it was understood by everyone at the time as just a joke. Nobody reported UFOs. There was no investigation of UFOs at Echo Flight. The only instructions they received from anybody at anytime was a reminder not to discuss the event or the ongoing investigation; they were never told not to discuss the UFOs, because the subject of UFOs never came up except during a very short interview in which the "joke" was offhandedly mentioned; NOBODY ever mentioned UFOs in relation to Echo Flight or any other equipment failures again, and Col. Figel has in the past explained all of this to both Hastings and Salas.

Only "rumors" of UFOs were ever discussed by anybody, just as the command histories all assert, and these -- as I've repeatedly affirmed -- were caused by a combination of this single, poorly executed joke, and the already confirmed fact that Raymond Fowler, a NICAP investigator who worked with Sylvania Corporation, was made aware -- due to his employment -- that the Echo Flight Incident had occurred. He didn't know any details regarding this event, because Sylvania wasn't involved even remotely with the investigation, so the information he had was based entirely on rumors -- he wasn't cleared for any details whatsoever. Unfortunately, Fowler told what little he knew to Roy Craig, an investigator with the Condon committee tasked by the Air Force with studying UFO phenomena, and told Craig as well that he suspected UFOs may have been involved. They weren't. The fact of the matter is that Fowler did not know the exact date of the incident, and told Craig that he suspected it had occurred coincident to a UFO reported on March 24-25, and subsequently investigated by Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase for Project Blue Book and Malmstrom AFB. These "rumors" referred to in the command histories, therefore, stemmed from the fact that Raymond Fowler didn't know as much about Echo Flight as he thought, including the date on which it occurred. All of this has been documented since 1995, as I have also discussed in my narrative, and can be examined or downloaded by anybody at any time at http://www.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Amer ... es-Carlson completely without charge.

Thank you, and please feel free to contact me at any time at jtcarl@yahoo.com if you have any comments regarding this matter. Please note as well that I have no intention of responding to Hastings on this forum -- although I'm equally sure he'll respond to this with more layered objections that are essentially meaningless. If he wishes to respond in any way, he can do so under the concerned but honest moderation at Reality Uncovered. They won't put up with his nonsense.

Also, I wouldn't worry about any lawsuits from any of these guys -- I've been studying basic law for a couple of years now in order to get a degree in Paralegal Studies, and while my studies haven't been as intensive as they would be at law school, I learned more than enough to affirm completely that these guys may make threats, but they have no grounds at all to sue for anything. In fact, I have a stronger case to sue them, than they have to sue anybody else in relation to this incident.

Most sincerely,
James Carlson

[longhaircowboy]

This is very interesting. I've often wondered about this incident. Salas originally said the UFOs were lights in the sky and the Boeing investigation found that a 10 volt pulse would do exactly what happened. But where does Capt. Don Crawford fit in all this. His statements appear to suggest something else. Just thinkin out loud here.
Go get em James.

[ryguy]

What an excellent, clearly written statement laying out the facts. I would be interested to hear how Hasting would respond. And yes, we certainly wouldn't tolerate any nonsense here...I'm pleased to see that's a fact that's recognized in the post.

Thanks for this Tom,
-Ryan

[Access Denied]

Well, you know me Ryan… I believe people who are interested in this subject deserve to know the truth about any particular incident they’re interested in and they ought to be able to look to UFOlogists who profess to dedicate their lives to the subject for the answers that they seek.

Unfortunately, all too often that “truth” doesn’t seem to include highlighting or, at the very least, even acknowledging, known conflicting information…

[where, as I always say, the “truth” is defined as all three sides of the story… your way, my way, and the way it actually happened]

[James Carlson]

Gentlemen, and Ladies,

To open this forum thread, the moderators of this forum kindly reprinted a post I sent to a number of web forums after my telephone discussion with Col.(Ret.) Walter Figel, Jr. Please keep in mind that references in that posting to "this forum", or similar wording does not, of course, apply specifically to the Reality Uncovered forum, but to those forums that were the first recipients to that post. I believed this was necessary to dictate at the time, because numerous members and moderators of those website forums had previously written me private emails discussing their reticence to post commentaries that they were otherwise certain would attract some response from Robert Hastings. His responses generally climax with multiple page postings from his book "UFOs and Nukes" that rarely have any relevance to whatever discussion has been initiated, and everybody involved wanted desperately to avoid this. Anybody utilizing a Google search and a laptop can easily confirm this for themselves, so there's no real need to point out what forums had reached such conclusions independently of my own postings. Having no desire to gain a similar reputation, I've tried to be very understanding of their very reasonable point of view, and tried to be very clear to everybody when I found it necessary to post anything that might tend to attract such a response. In any case, that's why the references above to "this forum" or similar comments were necessary for other websites, but should not be understood as a reference to this one.

In addition, I wanted to post in this forum, the other references I've made elsewhere that I have not yet included in my aforementioned narrative. I'm doing this purely in order to familiarize the readers of this forum to the associated commentaries, arguments and issues I've raised elsewhere; they will give readers a more definitive look at my thoughts and the motivations that have ultimately lead me to take such a positive, specific, and absolutely non-ambiguous stand regarding the events at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967.

To secure the above, therefore, please note the following:

Col.(Ret.) Walter Figel doesn't confirm anything that Robert Hastings or Robert Salas claim, and certainly doesn't indicate that anything very strange occurred at Echo Flight. It never has. Everything that Hastings posits as "evidence" to support this non-event is no more than his own insistence -- even to Figel -- that the UFO supposedly reported was actually a real object, and not just an example of witless banter. In fact, everything that Figel asserts is simply more evidence that NOTHING was actually seen by anybody. Let's just look at this event in some detail, shall we? This is something that Salas and Hastings have both repeatedly refused to even contemplate, preferring instead to attack the problems that I've noted in their fictional tales with little more than personal attacks directed at me, not my argument, which I've put down in some detail in my narrative. The scenario that I outline here has been confirmed by both my father and Col. Figel, which makes it a bit difficult for anybody to argue with, but I've found that those individuals who have invested the most time into the sad attempts to refute what has already been well-established don't care very much about facts or accuracy -- they just want to sell more books and videos, and continue to get paid whatever fee they've established at MUFON Conferences and the like.

Now the following interpretation depends to a great extent as well upon the input I've received from various members of the missileer community. Most readers are not aware of the actual sequence of events that go into something that sounds simple and quickly completed, such as "he checked the status of the missile". For that reason, I believe that such an examination is necessary to determine the facts as they actually occurred. Once the sequence is explained, I'm confident that any reader at any forum is more than intelligent to determine for himself or herself what really happened forty plus years ago. I think most people are bright enough to reach appropriate conclusions once they've been given all of the facts, which is pretty much all that I'm doing. Although I do admit to a weakness for making apparent the idiocy of others when they in turn make it so obvious to me.

On March 16, 1967, while on watch with Walt Figel at Echo Flight, shortly after he awoke from his sleep period, and during the time Figel was debriefing him on the mundane events of the previous night, my father, CAPT Eric D. Carlson, the MCCC at Echo Flight that morning, noticed that the missiles started going offline, because he happened to be the one facing the monitors. He didn't remember who specifically checked, or if it was the two of them together, but the VRSA indications showed that a specific series of errors -- channel 9 and 12 faults according to the command histories -- had taken down all of the missiles in the flight within ten seconds or so. To his knowledge, that had never happened before. In the command histories that were recorded every three months or so, and in the message traffic used as sources for those histories, are indications that these same errors -- contrary to what Robert Salas related some thirty years later -- had occurred once before, at Alpha Flight on December 19, 1966, taking down three of the ten missiles. It was due to this that the Boeing contractors had a fairly good idea what the cause was, or at least where they should start looking. These records were ignored by Salas and Hastings, and were purposely left out of the list of documents they have published on the CUFON website, even though they published other pages from the very same quarterly history in support of their version of these events.

Also contrary to what Salas has written in his various articles, and as the Top Secret Norforn ICBM histories that were only declassified a few short years ago, all assert quite plainly and with complete and unconfusing rhetoric, equipment failures, especially in the guidance and control units, that resulted in the failures of missiles in their silos, happened all the time between 1965 and 1969, when the contractors finally got everything under control. From what Figel states and as the command histories affirm, there were a number of maintenance crews that had gone out the night before, spending the night in the field. It was one of these crews that Figel asserts -- again plainly and with no confusion -- first mentioned a UFO; and it is this conversation that Hastings claims to be an actual UFO report. My father told me that there was no UFO, that the crew on the ground was just screwing around. But let's take a look at what transpired, because I believe the events make very plain exactly what happened -- events that have been detailed by Walt Figel to Hastings, and that I believe Hastings has poorly interpreted due to his own insistence that a UFO was involved.

From what I gather and from what I've read in the documents I've examined (all of which I've made available in my narrative to whomever wants to examine them in turn), there were three teams out who spent the night in the field, not four. That's what the command histories assert. When the missiles went offline it became necessary to determine the status of as many of those missiles as possible and as quickly as possible -- the VRSA indications read channels 9 and 12 No-Go from the LCC, but they needed to find out what errors were noted at the LFs as well, because if they're different they can indicate what kind of problem is registering; so the missile status has to be checked. There's no need to send out a team to check the three silos that already have teams present, so they determined to call those outcamping teams and have them check the actual status of the missiles at the LFs, since they were already there. Keep in mind that the missiles went offline at 0845 -- not terribly late in the day, but definitely after the work day has begun, and about two hours after the sun went up.

Each maintenance team was accompanied by a Security Escort Team who were there to provide protection, if necessary, and more importantly, to provide continuous communications via the 2-way radios that only the security personnel carried. Figel confirms all of this. So a little after 0845, Figel contacted security on the 2-way, established open comms and asked if the maintenance team was up yet; security said no, so he told security to get the maintenance guys up and have them check the missile status. Keep in mind that according to Hastings, a UFO has already shut down the missiles, doing so at 0845. Security was awake, but they saw and reported nothing. Maintenance was still asleep. Nobody has even said "UFO" yet, and the missiles are all officially offline.

In order to check the missile status, the maintainer has to go into the launcher equipment room which is 6-10 feet underground and can only be accessed from above by using the personnel access hatch -- this is very heavy and has to be unlocked and cranked open with a manual screwjack, which can take from 10 to 15 mins, in order to open it; but it can't be cranked open until a circuit lock adjacent to the access hatch has been removed first -- and that means a huge lock pin that's set inside the circuit lock has to be manually cranked up and removed, and that also adds another 5 minutes or so to the process, at least. The security personnel normally remove the lock pin, but that doesn't make the process go any faster, because you can't even start cranking open the access hatch until the lock pin has been removed. And before cranking open the the access hatch, which weighs almost a ton (although at the siloworld.com website, it says the access hatches at Ellsworth were 8 tons), a little cage of "barrier poles" also has to be set up, which looks kind of like the safety barrier that city workers put up surrounding a manhole whenever work is done underneath a road in the city. Now if it's cold outside, everything's frozen up, and this can add another few minutes to the process. And sometimes there's corrosion or rust -- it all depends on the last time the hatch was opened. Once it's open, the maintenance personnelman sets up the access ladder, and then he can climb down into the upper level of the launch equipment room. Once he's in the launch equipment room, only then can he check on the status of the missile in the silo, because everything that's necessary to do so is underground.

What I don't know about the process, and what nobody else has mentioned to me, is whether or not the crews that were camping out at the launch facility needed to be authenticated to get access to LER-1, the upper level of the launch equipment room. When they were camping out, were they inside or outside the fence of the LF? As I understand it, if they were camping outside the fence, they need to be authenticated in order to be allowed access to the LER. Now if they need to be authenticated, this adds more time to the process, although in this case it could probably have been done almost immediately -- but I'm not certain, and that's why I mention it. Figel mentions authenticating security, but he doesn't mention authenticating maintenance, nor how long it took if it was done, and it might be significant. If the maintenance crew doesn't need to be authenticated, we're still looking at about 20-30 minutes average just to get down into LER-1 to check on the status of the missile, unless the access hatch was opened the night before and left open throughout the night. That doesn't seem very likely to me for security and weathering reasons, but if I'm wrong, someone please tell me -- I don't think I am wrong, because I know how the military usually works, and that's by checklist (which Figel also refers to), and I don't believe anybody would put "open the access hatch, and leave it open all night while you're sleeping" on a checklist. I also don't know whether or not the team member going below into the underground LER-1 still has to "safe" the site before checking the missile status -- and that's kind of important, since below ground in the silo is a "No-Lone-Zone", and whoever goes below can't be alone with the equipment, except for a very, very brief time, because by doing so, he's breaking visual contact with the security crew or other maintenance crew members above ground. If he's still required to safe the site, then he's got to click in a digital safety switch in order to disarm all of the explosive devices on site, at which point he has to reestablish immediately visual contact with another member of his maintenance team or security. I don't know whether it was done or not, but I can't think of any good reason why 2 men wouldn't have gone below, so this might be entirely irrelevant to the actual process. However this is done, though, the security team still remains on the surface with the 2-way radio.

Once the status has been checked underground, the only way that maintenance can report to the LCC is by using the SIN telephone that's underground with all the equipment, since the security personnel stay on the surface, and they're the only guys with the 2-way radios. This is also confirmed by Figel in his "interview" with Hastings. This whole process is the major reason why I don't believe that the mention of UFOs to anybody on the SIN telephone was a valid report. And that's why I remain convinced that they were just screwing around. Security wakes them up, they throw on their clothes unless they slept rugged, and then they take about 20 minutes plus to open up the access hatch, climb down into LER-1 and check the status of the missile. Maintenance then calls the LCC on the SIN telephone below ground, and says something to the effect of, "yeah, we've got indication of a channel 9 No-Go -- I guess the UFO that's up there must have shut down the missile." And he says this while the security crew is still on the surface with the 2-way radio on which they've already established comms with the LCC. And yet, the first mention of a UFO comes from maintenance on the SIN telephone underground, and not by the security team on the surface with the supposed UFO and communications already established and open via the 2-way. Once the guy underground has said this, it's overheard by the team leader of one of the other security teams who are with another maintenance group at another silo, because they're also required to monitor the 2-ways -- that means they can overhear everything that's being said at the LCC -- he pops in with "yeah, there's one out here too!" and all of a sudden it's a regular holiday crowd of UFOs on the comms side, but no actual UFOs on site. Had there been a real UFO present, security would have notified either the command post or the LCC immediately, to determine whether Figel still wants them to go below, wait for a strike team or what. However the event occurred, though, it would never have been reported first by the maintenance crew underground -- I believe Figel and my father would have heard about it immediately from security on the surface, because that's their job -- they aren't checking the status of the missile -- they're looking after the maintenance team. So during the 20 plus minutes it takes to open the access hatch, go into the LER to check the status, and call the LCC on the SIN telephone, either nobody else saw the UFO except the guy preparing and then opening the access hatch, descending into the LER, and then calling the LCC, or nobody on the security team thought a UFO on site was important enough to call in via already established comms with the LCC, or there was no UFO. Common sense should tell you that there was no UFO, only a half-assed attempt to be amusing by a guy who was still asleep at 0845 when the missiles actually went offline. This is not a difficult scenario to follow through, unless you're just so convinced that UFOs were involved that you no longer consider the most obvious explanations for anything in relation to the event.

In addition, Hastings never explains what the UFO was doing hovering over the silo a good half hour (at least) after the missiles were already taken offline. Are the pilots just hanging out to see what affect their little "screw up the American missiles" game has on the natives? There are so many obvious holes to his version of this supposed flying saucer interference event that it surprises me the damn thing doesn't just sink along with other obvious fictions from its own weight. I guess because people like Hastings and Salas keep it alive for no purpose, with no evidence, and in obvious contradiction to anything that looks even remotely like common sense.

Everything that Figel has said to Hastings in every interview he's done, including the one Hastings repeatedly discusses above, as if it's some holy recognition of demonic possession or something equally and controversially important, sounds EXACTLY like this to me -- just a couple of guys screwing around, which according to some guys I've met at different missileer websites, used to happen a lot. Just a week or so ago, I got an email from a guy who was somewhat familiar with a hoax story out of 490th SMS in 1970-71, and he was told (by a drunken team member at a local watering hole, so you decide how accurate the story is) about a hoax that even ended up being reported in a UFO magazine -- which were also extremely plentiful at the time, more so than now, because UFOs were a lot more culturally relevant then; you couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about UFOs, watching a show about UFOs, or listening to people talk about UFOs. Anything for a laugh, y'know?

When I first asked my father about Echo Flight, he told me basically the same thing. He also told me that in the late 1960s he used to hear UFO "reports" all the time, at both Malmstrom AFB and in New Mexico, and this escalated the more that UFOs were in the news and discussed on television. He also said that to his knowledge not one UFO ever "reported" to him turned out to be anything to be concerned with, and that most of time it was just lights in the sky that the kids who were on watch would imagine to be more mysterious than they actually were. He said a point was reached when it happened so often that he was certain folks were reporting UFOs when there was nothing to report -- just to be funny or amusing -- and that a lot of this was due to television. I got interested in that portion of it, because like any other kid who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I spent a lot of time in front of the TV, so just for kicks I looked up what was on TV for March 1967, and was surprised to notice that there was a lot of mention of UFOs in the Sci-Fi shows like Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and The Invaders, crime shows like the Green Hornet, and comedies like Green Acres -- and this was just between March 9 and March 15, 1967; all of them dealt with flying saucers, either as real Sci-Fi threats or as hoaxes. I was particularly amused to find out that on March 15, 1967, the day before the Echo Flight Incident, Green Acres aired an episode called "The Saucer Season" about a UFO hoax investigated by an Air Force Lt. played by Robert Hastings, who was also a regular at that time on McHale's Navy. Deja Vu? Coincidence? Synchronicity? Irony? Or just stupid-weird? You decide...

And so, in both the short and the long run, we end up with an Echo Flight Incident having more in common with a repeat of the Green Acres episode "The Saucer Season" just a few hours after it had originally aired the day before than with an actual report of a UFO. This isn't even rocket science anymore -- it's just a pathetic manipulation of already established facts by some guy with a tape recorder and a pen looking for anything at all that might show how Robert Salas' ridiculous little fiction about UFOs and missiles may have actually occurred. But anybody with an open mind who looks close enough can't help but notice that there is NOTHING there.

Look, go to the websites and talk to the missileers -- they've got lifetimes of experience with this very thing that neither I nor Hastings will ever possess. Talk to them ... please. Ask them if this sounds like a valid UFO event -- ask them what they think about Hastings' little missile book and the stories he's written. I've told you what I believe, based on what I've read from every statement available, what my father has told me, what I've discussed with other missileers elsewhere, and what I've read and uncovered through my own research. I've detailed everything, given you the sources, and in most cases told you exactly where you can look up the documents yourselves on the internet, so you can judge the matter and its context for yourself at your leisure. In my opinion, it would seem overly hasty for anyone to judge that Figel's version of these events describes an actual UFO sighting, but these guys -- Salas, Klotz, Hastings, CUFON, et al -- are very used to doing exactly that; all of the confirmations Robert Salas has gathered to "prove" his story are, for the most part, nonsense. He claims confirmation by my father, which is bunk -- my father doesn't even believe in UFOs, and he's said this on numerous occassions. I communicated very shortly with Salas' watch commander -- Mr. Frederick Meiwald -- and although he didn't want to go into any details for personal reasons having nothing to do with the story itself (a health related issue), he did tell me that, like my father, he doesn't believe in UFOs either. What kind of confirmations are these?

Instead of the litany of questions regarding my claims and my father's memories that Robert Hastings' transcription of his interview with Col. Figel actually details, he should have asked more important questions like: how much time elapsed between Figel's instructions to check the status of the missile and when that status was actually reported? Did Figel at any time for however many years believe that a UFO had actually shut down the missiles at Echo Flight? Did Figel believe that what he heard on the 2-way and the SIN telephone correlated with an actual report of a UFO, and did he respond by doing anything different from what he would normally have done? Are there any errors in the scenario I've outlined above? Other than to clear UFOs as having anything at all to do with the missile failures, did the investigators or anybody else spend a lot of time discussing the mention of UFOs? Did the Malmstrom UFO officer, Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase, question Figel or anybody else regarding UFOs, or did he investigate any UFOs at all in relation to Echo Flight? Did anybody at all seem concerned about a UFO having somehow caused a flight of missiles to drop into a No-Go state? When everybody concerned was debriefed later, did anybody tell them not to discuss the matter of UFOs, or just not to discuss anything having to do with the Echo Flight missiles going offline? Was anybody ever debriefed by anybody specifically regarding UFOs, or was everything focused on Echo Flight equipment and the electrical environment? Was there any serious response from anybody at all resulting from what seems to be an offhanded mention of UFOs?

Please believe me, I have no intentions of disputing with anybody the existence of UFOs or even whether UFOs are overly fascinated with nuclear facilities. Frankly, I'm not much interested in UFOs, and what I know about them is almost entirely the result of research stemming from this one incident. I don't know whether Figel believes in UFOs, and I'm not even sure whether that's relevant (this was written prior to my discussion with Col. Figel in which he stated very strongly that he does not belueve in UFOs). But I do believe that his past statements have been grievously misinterpreted by people who are more concerned with finding UFOs than they are with finding out what really happened. Because of this, I think they're blinded to what he's been telling them from day one -- of course, the same might be said of me, and if that's the case, I'll apologize -- I have no desire to win an argument by trying to hide actual facts and events, or by lying about something, and I'll concede the field entirely if I'm that far off (but I'm not that far off, as my discussion with Col. Figel has proven). I would still believe what my father claims, but I would absolutely quit saying that Figel has been misinterpreted, and I would go out publically and state that my suppositions regarding his version of events was in error. And that would require an apology to Mr. Hastings that I would otherwise absolutely dread, because I absolutely detest the man -- but I would still aplogize and try to put things right. I'm not a dishonest person, and I don't intend to give others reason to make such a claim. I know words and phrases like "personal honor" aren't particularly popular these days, but some people do take character seriously, and I like to think that I'm one of those people, and that my actions show this. If I need to make amends, than I'll make amends -- I promise you that. But I don't believe it will ever come to that, because the "evidence" these guys have presented in full knowledge of the facts of this case is absolutely pathetic -- and the fact that they've continuously ignored or distorted the record of this very well-documented event suggests to me that their conclusions are studiously forced into a box with a UFO, making any examination without that UFO impossible.

The research that I've done all points to exactly one cause of the missile failures -- an electronic noise pulse that was probably generated internally either in the microcircuitry adjacent to the logic coupler or in the logic coupler itself. But it could have happened anywhere -- and if Kaminsky was an actual electrical engineer in 1967, he should have known this -- it was, after all, a very common problem in the early use of integrated circuitry. I have also documented and detailed all of this in my narrative, and it is a well-known character of technological history that Kaminsky either ignores or refuses to consider. The fact that documents from 1967-1969 all assert very plainly and in a very detailed manner EXACTLY what transpired makes it very unlikely that Kaminsky was giving a factual record of the events. I'll give Salas the benefit of the doubt here that the letter was genuinely written by Kaminsky, but there are a number of points to that letter that are quite simply WRONG, and cannot be supported by anything. For instance, he states that "Meanwhile I was contacted by our representative at OOAMA (Don Peterson) and told by him that the incident was reported as being a UFO event--That a UFO was seen by some Airmen over the LCF at the time E-Flight went down." We know for a fact that didn't happen, because if it had, Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase would have investigated it per standing orders that went into effect in 1966; he continuously affirmed before his death that Echo Flight had nothing to do with UFOs, and he did not investigate any UFO sightings at all by anybody until March 24-25, 1967. I also show in my narrative that while there were rumors of UFOs in relation to Echo Flight, these rumors were very likely the result of discussions between Raymond Fowler, a NICAP investigator employed by Sylvania Corporation, and Roy Craig, an investigator with the Condon committe tasked by the Air Force with studying UFO phenomena, such rumors stemming from the fact that Raymond Fowler didn't know half as much about Echo Flight as he thought he knew, including the date on which it occurred. All of this has been documented since 1995, as I discuss in my narrative, and can be examined by anybody at any time; in most cases my sources can be downloaded or otherwise accessed on the internet. I didn't make up anything, my conclusions are valid and far more likely than the one espoused by Hastings and Salas, and my sources are very well regarded by both scholars and historians.

All of the logic couplers used by Autonetics throughout both the Minuteman I and the Minuteman II systems were highly susceptible to noise pulse, and when such an EMP was injected into the logic coupler, 7 out of 10 times the result was the same series of errors noted at Echo Flight, and then everything goes offline. A transformer had apparently blown around the time as the actual incident, so a lot of testing was conducted in an attempt to determine whether or not the transformer voltage could have coupled with the shielding in use on the LF cabling, but all the testing was negative. This indicated that the transient voltage spike affecting the logic coupler had to have originated somewhere adjacent to the LCC. Since no such testing could really be done to prove where the noise came from without taking down an LCC -- and even then it was doubtful that they'd find anything positive for the money they'd have to spend -- it was decided to correct the problem at the logic coupler by removing it's susceptibility to EMP noise -- a fix which, thankfully, was already scheduled system wide as part of the Minuteman II Force Modernization; the Air Force had been testing EMP affects on the electrical grid and LCC to LF cable systems at Hill AFB, Warren AFB, and contractor facilities since 1965 as part of their plans to upgrade the EMP defenses, and had made suggestions that would shield the logic couplers from electromagnetic interference of all kinds. They were also certain this would prevent electromagnetic noise from entering the logic couplers of the Minuteman I systems. So the Air Force simply ordered the fix to Minuteman I as well, as part of the new Force Mods. By July 1968, all the changes had been made, and the problem never occurred again. All of the command histories indicate that this is what happened, and the Top Secret Noforn ICBM Histories that the Air Force declassified a couple of years ago all say the same thing. The ICBM histories don't even mention UFOs in relation to any equipment problems at Malmstrom AFB (they might mention them elsewhere, but I only looked at the late 1960s at Malmstrom AFB -- but they're all online now at Georgetown University, so maybe I'll check someday, just for fun).

Now from the outside, that's what it looks like to me. Maybe I got some details wrong, but I don't see the USAF spending so much money to conduct all of those tests if they knew a UFO had actually shut down the missiles, particularly since they were in the middle of a very well-documented budget crisis at the time. And from what I see, Walt Figel's version of these events is pretty much the same. I believe Mr. Hastings is neglecting a more common sense explanation in favor of something he desperately wants to believe in, but can't possibly prove. If I'm wrong, please tell me -- I'll apologize for the things I've said to Robert Hastings and to Robert Salas for my insistence that they have misinterpreted what Figel told them. I have no wish for my argument to prevail on the basis of my own stubborn adherence to an explanation that can't be otherwise supported -- that position on the field has already been co-opted by others. So if I'm wrong, tell me. Show me how I'm wrong -- explain to me in a sensible fashion that doesn't rely on Hastings' and Salas' insistence that "everybody else lied about it", because that's always the last resort of idiots, and I don't think the readers of this forum are than stupid.

But if you think I'm right ... please tell everybody else.

I recently got some additional valuable information from the missileer community that seems pretty conclusive regarding Walt Figel's remembrance of what occurred -- Hastings has ignored it entirely, of course -- but I think it's revealing nonetheless. I've also accounted -- to my own satisfaction, at least -- for the "rumors of UFOs" that the command history refers to, and that both Salas and Hastings have repeatedly and mistakenly claimed to be an actual UFO report. Many people have written that these "rumors" are obviously evidence of UFO concern in relation to Echo Flight, so I tried to find out how they may have started, and, oddly enough, the answer for all of it came from Salas himself, who was so ignorant regarding the entire matter that he had no idea the importance the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB represented. It all falls into place nicely -- of course, being "rumors", no one can ever say for sure, but it all fits so neatly, that I at least am thoroughly convinced.

Throughout the entire course of the incident and the following investigation, not one message detailing any of the events at all was sent to the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB -- not one. And these were the guys who's responsibility was to follow up on anything regarding new technology, new weapons, the abilities of new weapons and how effective they were against US targets; these were the guys who used to rebuild captured or wrecked MIGs during the war. They were also in charge of everything having to do with UFOs -- the ran Blue Book and every other research project that the Air Force ever had regarding UFOs. They didn't even get a heads up via INFO only messages after the Echo Flight Incident. They were completely left out of the process -- all messages and notices went to OOAMA, BSD, Hill AFB, locations that you would completely expect if this were an electrical malfunction or event of some kind and not an attack on the most powerful means of waging war the world has ever witnessed.

In addition, all of the message traffic from the very beginning had a PRIORITY precedence; if this had been a UFO the very first notification would have had a FLASH precedence as an attack on a DoD system, and everything after that would have been IMMEDIATE. Nothing like that went out in reference to Echo Flight. In addition, there were three different notification systems that could have been used -- and UFOlogists argue amongst themselves all the time regarding which ones should have been used and when; the procedures are all outlined in AFM 55-11, JANAP 146, and AFR 80-17, which went into effect September 1966. NONE of these was used to report a UFO at Echo Flight, and the station UFO officer, Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase, while well aware of the events at Echo Flight, conducted NO investigation regarding UFOs and repeatdly told those who asked that UFOs were not involved. Had a UFO been present, standing USAF orders via AFR 80-17 would have required that he not only conduct such an investigation, but immediately notify Project Blue Book and FTD at Wright-Patterson AFB that such an event had occurred. There is NOTHING to indicate that anything more complex than a relatively mediocre and prosaic electrical event was to blame, except for Robert Salas, who has changed his story so much and so significantly that he's no longer a credible witness, and a couple of guys Robert Hastings solicited on the internet who tell stories that are absolutely absurd.

Most recently, Robert Salas has decided that the date for the event he "remembers" is March 24-25. Unfortunately for that supposition, Lt. Col. Chase conducted an investigation of the Belt sighting outside of Malmstrom on the 24th. As a result, the sighting was recorded and dicussed by Project Blue Book. One of the NICAP investigators attached to this story worked for Sylvania Corporation -- a guy named Raymond Fowler. Salas implies or states repeatedly that Fowler knew all about the Echo Flight incident, and told Roy Craig of the Condon Committee, who supposedly investigated it as a UFO sighting. But Sylvania didn't know squat about Echo Flight, because Sylvania was never involved in the investigation. They had absolutely nothing to do with any of the electrical systems at Malmstrom AFB, as Salas contends, excepting the 564th Squadron, which was all Minuteman II missiles. As a result, the information Fowler gave to Roy Craig was incorrect; he told him the Echo Flight Incident happened coincident to UFO sightings, because of the UFO rumors the investigation had already cleared. The only sightings of UFOs in Montana for March 1967 were those around March 24-25. So both Fowler and Craig, who was told by Fowler, believed the Echo Flight Incident occurred on March 24-25, which we know is incorrect. So while Fowler was running around investigating an event he didn't know the correct date of, Craig went directly to Lt. Col. Chase and asked him about the Echo Flight Incident. Chase was not about to correct the date, which Salas interprets as Chase hiding information from Craig in a dishonest attempt to hide something, when he didn't correct the date because everything having to do with Echo Flight was still under investigation and was classified SECRET. And Craig had no clearance. Fowler had a SECRET clearance, but since Sylvania had nothing to do with Echo Flight, he lacked the "need-to-know" for access. There's nothing more mysterious here than the standard application of security. As a result, half of the UFO rumors that Salas asserts are an indication that UFOs were actually involved at Echo Flight came up in response to a NICAP investigator's ignorance during an investigation that he admits turned up NOTHING having to do with UFOs.

Both of these guys -- Craig and Fowler -- are now asking questions about Echo Flight missiles going offline coincident to UFO sightings which occurred on March 24-25 -- because remember, that's the only date they've got for any UFO sighting in Montana, because Lewis Chase investigated that sighitng for Blue Book, as was his duty as UFO officer at Malmstrom. So because of this, we now have rumors attached to an actual missile flight being taken offline for March 24-25, when the only flight of missiles that actually went no-go was Echo Flight on March 16. A NICAP investigator who's also on Sylvania's Minuteman Board as a result of the contract to work the ground electrical grid at 564th SMS and at other Minuteman II Wings and an investigator for the Condon Committee at the University of Colorado asking questions about UFO sighintgs already investigated in some detail by Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase coincident with missile failures that didn't happen, creates a lot of fodder to burn in the rumor mill, and as would be expected the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB eventually got wind of it. Their immediate response was to send off a letter to Lt. Col. Chase asking him to clarify some rumors they've heard about equipment failures coincident to the March 24-25 UFO sighings reported in the newspapers and investigated by Chase. Chase immediately writes back, telling FTD that there were NO equipment failures anywhere at Malmstrom during the March 24-25 sightings or around the same period of time -- not failures that might have been mistakenly interpreted as linked to the UFO sighings, but NO failures at all. He references his previous report, already sent to FTD, because they run Blue Book and all new technology offensive matters. Before FTD was called FTD, they were Air Technical Intelligence (ATIC). They changed their name in 1961. Today they're called National Air and Space Intelligence Center. If UFOs take down a nuclear missile system, they're the very first guys you call. So we have proof from Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase that not only was Echo Flight not associated in any way with UFOs -- because that's what he told Roy Craig, when he first started nosing around for Condon on the basis of information he received from Fowler -- we also know that NOTHING involving equipment malfunctions happened on March 24-25.

All of this information was available since 1995 at least, because that's when Craig published his book about his UFO investigations for Condon. Salas, however, doesn't discuss any of this until 15 years later, after both Roy Craig and Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase have died and can no longer discuss the matter or defend their reputations. And his take on the whole thing amounts to one, inflammatory statement: Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase LIED to FTD to avoid discussing missile failures with a military unit outside of his chain of command!! And all of this when FTD WAS his chain of command. It's like he has no idea who FTD was, what they were in charge of, what their responsibilities were, like they were some minor local Coast Guard group out of Maine or something, and not representing the VERY FIRST GROUP who would have been told if UFOs had caused equipment malfunctions anywhere in the country! And that's just about all Salas has said on the subject: Lewis D. Chase is a liar. He also says Roy Craig was incompetent for not properly investigating the matter -- taking little notice that Craig's investigation didn't get anywhere because he lacked any security clearance for access -- and yet, Craig nonetheless got more than Salas has, because he walked out of Chase's office confident that Echo Flight had absolutely nothing to do with UFOs, a confidence Salas attributes once again to Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase being a good liar, and passing false information to the Condon Committee.

And now, Reality Uncovered is updated with all of the newest information and associated research I've conducted in order to prove that these guys not only have no reason for believing the lies they've published, they have no reason for publically asserting that my father is a liar who has lied even to his own family for the past forty years. In my opinion, they are shameful examples of humanity, they don't care who they injure, and they do it, trashing the otherwise unassailable reputations of good men only to sell books.

Most sincerely,
James Carlson
Albuquerque, NM

[Access Denied]

Please keep in mind that references in that posting to "this forum", or similar wording does not, of course, apply specifically to the Reality Uncovered forum, but to those forums that were the first recipients to that post.

Good point, to avoid any confusion I’ll go back and insert some comments to that effect.

His [Hastings’] responses generally climax with multiple page postings from his book "UFOs and Nukes" that rarely have any relevance to whatever discussion has been initiated, and everybody involved wanted desperately to avoid this.

True, he was banned from BAUT for doing precisely that despite repeated warnings… not sure what he was thinking. It certainly didn’t help his credibility any… at least not with anybody that matters if he’s truly concerned about the alleged “alien presence”.

This is something that Salas and Hastings have both repeatedly refused to even contemplate, preferring instead to attack the problems that I've noted in their fictional tales with little more than personal attacks directed at me, not my argument, which I've put down in some detail in my narrative.

Well, it will be interesting to see how he answers your list of 49 very specific questions… he keeps telling me soon so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

[the latest word from Hastings is another week or so]

I think most people are bright enough to reach appropriate conclusions once they've been given all of the facts, which is pretty much all that I'm doing. Although I do admit to a weakness for making apparent the idiocy of others when they in turn make it so obvious to me.

Welcome to the club, at least you’re honest about it…

These records were ignored by Salas and Hastings, and were purposely left out of the list of documents they have published on the CUFON website, even though they published other pages from the very same quarterly history in support of their version of these events.

Actually, I don’t see how anybody could believe what they published supports their version of events. The document clearly state the “rumors” (not “reports”) of UFOs were unfounded...

http://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/page38.htm

“Rumors of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight were disproven. A Mobile Strike Team, which had checked all November Flight's LFs on the morning of 16 March 67, were questioned and stated that no unusual activity or sightings were observed.[83] (U)”

[note also this “declassified” document concerning the Echo Flight incident was merely CONDIFENTIAL and the above paragraph was UNCLASSFIED even though it was derived from the original SECRET (not TOP SECRET) engineering report]

November Flight looks to be about 30 miles away so it seems to me like somebody outside should have been able to see something if anything was there… never mind RADAR.

If anybody anywhere actually saw a UFO, why haven’t we heard from any of these people? The only “consequence” for Salas (who’s not even a witness) claiming the rumors weren’t rumors has been book deals and paid appearances… hardly a deterrent for any would be “whistle blowers” methinks.

What I don't know about the process, and what nobody else has mentioned to me, is whether or not the crews that were camping out at the launch facility needed to be authenticated to get access to LER-1, the upper level of the launch equipment room. When they were camping out, were they inside or outside the fence of the LF? As I understand it, if they were camping outside the fence, they need to be authenticated in order to be allowed access to the LER. Now if they need to be authenticated, this adds more time to the process, although in this case it could probably have been done almost immediately -- but I'm not certain, and that's why I mention it.

Well, obviously these are the kind of procedures that are likely to be classified so I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to be pressing anybody for that kind of information but that’s the sign of a good researcher… pointing out where erroneous assumptions may have been made or knowledge gaps may exist right up front.

If the maintenance crew doesn't need to be authenticated, we're still looking at about 20-30 minutes average just to get down into LER-1 to check on the status of the missile, unless the access hatch was opened the night before and left open throughout the night. That doesn't seem very likely to me for security and weathering reasons, but if I'm wrong, someone please tell me -- I don't think I am wrong, because I know how the military usually works, and that's by checklist (which Figel also refers to), and I don't believe anybody would put "open the access hatch, and leave it open all night while you're sleeping" on a checklist.

Well, the only reason I can see for leaving it open would be if they couldn’t get it shut…or the missile had been taken off alert for maintenance which evidently wasn’t the case.

I was particularly amused to find out that on March 15, 1967, the day before the Echo Flight Incident, Green Acres aired an episode called "The Saucer Season" about a UFO hoax investigated by an Air Force Lt. played by Robert Hastings, who was also a regular at that time on McHale's Navy. Deja Vu? Coincidence? Synchronicity? Irony? Or just stupid-weird? You decide...

Not to mention you, Hastings, and Doty all live in Albuquerque, NM…

<insert Twilight Zone theme music here>

At any rate, I think the premise of Hastings’ whole “UFOs and Nukes” thing is laughable… specifically, the notion that our putative alien visitors are interested in/concerned about nukes and there’s an overlooked/ignored/covered-up “threat” to National Security as a result. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming as it appears nothing has really changed as a result of the alleged “alien presence”…



Not to change the subject but the most hilarious case that Hastings promotes (Vandenberg AFB aka “Big Sur”) is the alleged “shooting down” by aliens of, get this… a dummy warhead!



[apparently they missed the RV that hit the intended target]

[James Carlson]

Gentlemen, and Ladies,

It's becoming increasingly apparent that Robert Hastings has decided not to discuss the Echo Flight Incident in a forum that will require him to follow civil rules of debate and procedure without allowing him get away with the nonsense he liberally applies to argument elsewhere. Fortunately, he still acts as if he wants confrontation with the truth elsewhere, and while I don't have the time or desire to bounce all over the Internet responding to each new attack, I don't mind at all quoting from arguments he's made elsewhere, and responding to them here. Since they have very obviously been directed at me, I will respond to any and all, but I will only do so at this forum, as I've previously stated.

The following comments were made by Robert Hastings on 24 February, 2010 at http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/fo ... pic=176314.

Regarding the Malmstrom AFB Echo Flight UFO incident of March 16, 1967--involving the full-flight, 10-missile shutdown that occurred just prior to UFOs being reported to the deputy missile commander on duty, now-retired Col. Walter Figel, by a maintenance team member and a security police team member--some highly relevant facts have been omitted by James Carlson in his recent posts on various websites.

To illustrate the problem, on another blog, ... Carlson wrote: Walt Figel and my father were the only people in the room, and Figel has repeatedly stated that he had the impression the guys who said "This UFO must have brought the missiles down" were joking around. In every single interview with him, he has said the same thing: "I thought it was a joke, that these guys were yanking my chain"...

What Col. Walt Figel (USAF Ret.) *actually* told me in an audiotaped interview was quite different, something James already knew when he wrote the passage above, because I had earlier posted large excerpts from the interview on the same blog. James' selective editing of Figel's words—regarding the report he got from the Security Alert Team member of a UFO hovering directly over one of Echo’s missile silos—was intended to alter their meaning, to create the spin he requires to make his factually-inaccurate debunking of the Echo Flight UFO incident hold together.

VERBATIM EXCERPT FROM MY 10/20/08 INTERVIEW WITH COL. FIGEL:

RH: What was the demeanor of the guard you were talking to?

WF: Um, you know, I wouldn’t say panicked, or anything [like that]. I was thinking he was yanking my chain more than anything else.

RH: But he seemed to be serious to you?

WF: He seemed to be serious and I wasn’t taking him seriously.

RH: Alright. If it was a large object, did he describe the shape of the object?

WF: He just said a large round object.

RH: Directly over the LF (Launch Facility)?

WF: Directly over the site.

END OF EXCERPT

After speaking with Figel, in October 2008, I urged James Carlson to call him, to hear all of this from the colonel’s own mouth. James has steadfastly refused to do so, nearly a year-and-a-half later, something one may verify by going to the link above and reviewing his posts on that thread. Carlson says he doesn't need to speak with the other person in the capsule that day because he knows that his "father would never lie to" him.

In short, anyone who reads James Carlson’s take on things, including what he says former Minuteman missile launch officer Bob Salas (or Col. Figel or I) supposedly said, and then checks his comments against the original source material, will quickly learn how reckless and selective James is with the facts.

A larger excerpt of my telephone conversation with Col. Walter Figel follows here:

WF: [At the time of the Echo Flight shutdown] what was unusual was that several of the missiles were open...for some routine maintenance. I don’t remember why. But, uh, at least two of them were running on diesel power so they were not connected to the power grid. I don’t remember if it was three open or four open [but] it was just routine maintenance. Nothing had happened [to the missiles]. It was just the time of the year for routine maintenance. Um, and the day before, there were maintenance teams out there. They had stayed overnight—

RH: Do you know how many maintenance teams were out overnight?

WF: You know, I think it was four. It was the two sites that had diesels running and two others. And when maintenance stays overnight they...stay in a camper...When you have maintenance on the site and they’re going to stay overnight, you have a security team on the site.

RH: Right.

(Break. Figel goes into detail about security procedures.)

WF: [When] the missiles dropped off alert, I started calling the maintenance people out there on the radio to talk to them. I had the security guard authenticate so I know I’m talking to a security guard and, you know, [I asked] “What’s going on? Is maintenance trying to get into the silo?” [The guard said,] “No, they’re still in the camper.” [So, I said,] “Get ‘em up, I want to talk to them.” Then I tried to tell them what I had was a Channel 9 No-Go.

RH: Uh huh.

WF: Uh, we did that with the sites that were there, that [had maintenance teams and their guards on site] and I sent Strike Teams to two other sites. There’s no sense sending them where I [already] have a guard and a gun and an authenticate.

RH: Right.

WF: Uh—

RH: So far in this narrative, you haven’t mentioned UFOs.

WF: [Laughs] That’s correct. Um, somewhere along the way, um, one of the maintenance people—cause he didn’t know what was going on any place else either, they have no capability of talking to each other [at different launch sites], in other words, they can talk to the [launch] capsule but they can’t talk to each other—

RH: Right

WF: —unless they were on the radio and no one was using the radio except the security police. And the guy says, “We got a Channel 9 No-Go. It must be a UFO hovering over the site. I think I see one here.” [I said,] “Yeah, right, whatever. What were you drinking?” And he tried to convince me of something and I said, well, I basically, you know, didn’t believe him. [Laughs] I said, you know, we have to get somebody to look at this [No-Go]. [A short time later] one of the Strike Teams that went out, one of the two, claimed that they saw something over the site.

RH: How did they describe that?

WF: Oh, on radio, [they said,] “There’s this large object hovering over the site!” I’ve always been a non-believer [in UFOs] so I said, “Right, sure you do.” [They responded,] “Yeah! Yeah, we do!” So, [I said,] “There’s two of you there, saying so, so write it down in your report.” [The Strike Team leader] said, “What do you want us to do?” [I said,] “Follow your checklist. Go to the site, open it up, and call me.”

RH: What was the demeanor of the guard you were talking to?

WF: Um, you know, I wouldn’t say panicked, or anything [like that]. I was thinking he was yanking my chain more than anything else.

RH: But he seemed to be serious to you?

WF: He seemed to be serious and I wasn’t taking him seriously.

RH: Alright. If it was a large object, did he describe the shape of the object?

WF: He just said a large round object.

RH: Directly over the LF?

WF: Directly over the site.

(BREAK. Figel describes hearing from the maintenance man about his opening up the silo, going down into it, and reporting that even though the missile was offline, nothing was visually damaged or otherwise amiss at the site.)

RH: Did he describe the object leaving the scene?

WF: No. He never said anything about it again.

(BREAK. Figel describes telling all the maintenance teams to stay at their sites until relieved, and not to attempt repairs until told to do so, since the missile silos were in effect “crime scenes”.)

RH: When you got the first call, well, when the missiles went down, you didn’t have an inkling of an alleged UFO-involvement until you got the report back from the first Strike Team member?

WF: That’s correct. (RH: Actually, upon reviewing the taped conversation with Figel, I realized that the missile maintenance man had apparently mentioned seeing the UFO first.)

RH: Okay, uh, and only one of the two teams reported seeing an object?

WF: Right.

RH: Uh, did you discuss the report with Mr. Carlson—that you were being told that there was a UFO at one of the sites?

WF: Um, he could hear it, uh, I mean he was sitting right there, two feet away from me—

RH: So—

WF: Whatever I said, he would have heard.

(Break. Figel describes going back to Malmstrom with Carlson and being debriefed by “everybody and his brother.”)

RH: Did any of the conversations back at squadron headquarters, uh, was there any mention of UFOs?

WF: I told them everything everyone told me. No one made any comments or inquiries—

RH: So you did mention the report that you got from the Strike Team?

WF: Yes.

RH: And no one asked any questions about UFOs per se?

WF: No.

RH: Did they act skeptically or negatively when you mentioned [the Strike Team’s UFO report]?

WF: They just wrote things down.

RH: [Laughs] That sounds right. Poker-faced and—

WF: [Laughs] Poker-faced and wrote things down. They just said, “Thank you very much. Don’t talk about it.” I didn’t sign anything, I can tell you that.

(Break. Hastings describes similar testimony from other missileers who were debriefed at Malmstrom and other Strategic Air Command bases, following UFO-related incidents in the missile fields.)

WF: What did Eric [Carlson] have to say [about the shutdown incident]? (RH had interviewed Carlson two weeks earlier, on 10/6/08)

RH: Uh, he said that he couldn’t recall any UFO-involvement in the incident. He couldn’t remember if you had mentioned UFOs, one way or another. His son [James] has now [posted] on a blog, a web log, a couple of lengthy statements in which he defamed Salas, said Salas was a liar, [and said] there was nothing involving UFOs at Echo...

WF: Did Eric say anything else that was a discontinuity [relative to what I’ve said]?

RH: ...Well, I [told Eric] that you had [heard from] a guard or a maintenance person that there was an object above the site, which you’ve confirmed today—

WF: Yes.

RH: —And I asked Eric if he remembered any of that, and he said that he did not. And, um, I asked him why his son would have written this scathing, very negative summary, which I will send [to] you, about the event—

WF: That will be interesting.

RH: —calling Salas a liar, and so on and so forth.

WF: Well, I didn’t do that.

RH: Well, I know, but his son, you know, for whatever reason, his son, James Carlson, has got a bug up his nose and said that nothing happened, there were no reports of UFOs, which you told me is incorrect because you got one.

WF: I did!

RH: Well, according to James, it was all bull and Salas was basically pulling it out of the air. [Eric] Carlson just, he didn’t really want to talk about it, frankly, but he did answer my questions. He just was kind of circumspect. I can’t say that he’s not being truthful when he says he doesn’t remember talking to you about UFOs, but that’s what he told me.

WF: I’m sure we had a long conversation [right after it happened]. I mean, I reported everything to him that I heard or was told. I mean, we were together, you know? [Laughs]

RH: Well, it has been 40 years, so we have to take that into account. [That is, the possibility of faded memories.]

END OF TELEPHONE TRANSCRIPT

So, folks, James Carlson has it all wrong, according to his father’s deputy missile commander that day at Echo Flight, now retired Col.

Walter Figel. Actually, James, the presence of a UFO at one of Echo’s missiles was *seriously* reported to Figel, by both a missile maintenance technician and a Security Alert Team member. It was described as a “large, round object”, hovering directly over the launch facility. Moreover, James, Figel insists that your father was fully aware of the situation, given that he was sitting “two feet away” from Figel during his phone calls with the on-site maintenance man and the responding missile security policeman. As to why your father can not, or will not, confirm Figel’s story, I won’t speculate.

Nothing's ever stopped Hastings from speculating about anything -- not even the facts that have been repeatedly presented. It seems to me that he reaches more conclusions than Col. Figel does. After all, it's apparent that his insistence that "the presence of a UFO at one of Echo’s missiles was *seriously* reported to Figel, by both a missile maintenance technician and a Security Alert Team member" is wishful thinking; it's very apparent that he lacks any ability to interpret what someone on the telephone is telling him. I can say this with honesty and copmplete candor because I have spoken to Col. Figel, and I've discussed this in my first post above. The version of events that I have published has been verified by both Col. Figel and my father -- definitively. Both gentlemen have made that very clear to me, and I in turn have made it very clear to the readers of this forum. Robert Hastings apparently felt that I would simply absorb his personal attacks and insults without checking his facts and sources, and he was wrong. I don't know if whether or not his apparent confidence is entirely due to this, but one cannot help but wonder about the equally strong statements supposedly made by his other sources. Researchers who are unwilling to accept the commentaries in Hastings' book blindly and without requiring any sort of confirmation elsewhere, may be inclined to double-check his supposedly thorough "research". By doing so, they may very well find for themselves a valuable tool to refute the nonsense he continues to espouse. As for everybody else, it is my opinion that nothing he has written should be believed without further and *serious* confirmation, and the subjects of his interviews should probably be reinterviewed by more capable individuals who possess a higher degree of intellectual honesty. Robert Hastings, in the example of his handling of the testimony provided by both Col. (Ret.) Walter Figel, Jr. and my father, Maj. (Ret.) Eric D. Carlson, has proven that he is incapable of doing so within the bounds of honesty and personal ethics demanded by people who deserve to know whether the materials they are reading are fiction or non-fiction. I believe that all of his other "witnesses" or "victims" or whatever you want to call them, should be reexamined in full. I would demand the same of Robert Salas, James Klotz, and anybody who has been introduced as a witness to extraordinary events by CUFON. I believe that one and all have proven they are not capable of conducting an honest investigation of such matters.

The following comments were made by Robert Hastings on 24 February, 2010 at http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/fo ... pic=176314.

Now, there is independent confirmation of airmen at Echo Flight reporting UFOs at the time of the shutdowns. Robert Kaminski, the Boeing Corporation engineer responsible for investigating the Minuteman missile shutdowns at Echo Flight, wrote to researcher James Klotz on February 1, 1997, and told Klotz what actually happened after his team began their inquiry.

EXCERPTS FROM KAMINSKI’S LETTER TO JAMES KLOTZ

“Hi James,

I received your package of information on Tuesday January 28, 1997. After reviewing the information it sure revived memories concerning the Malmstrom AFB E-Flight investigation of which I was the Boeing in-house project engineer for the field team investigation. Per your request I have documented my direct involvement as I recall the event and give names and other information not previously covered in my book, "Lying Wonders."

As I previously mentioned to Bob Salas and others, I never submitted a final report from Boeing to the Air Force. A final report was generated but not submitted. This will become clear as you will see in my recollection noted below...

At the time of the incident, I was an engineer in the MIP/CNP (Material Improvement Project/Controlled Numbered Problem) group. This was a Logistics Engineering group. The group was contracted by the Air Force so that Boeing could respond to specific Air Force Minuteman Missiles problems that occurred in the field. The assignments came from the OOAMA Air Material Command. Our group was made up of a small unit of engineers that were knowledgeable of, and had worked on the Minuteman Missile program...

We were usually notified by our OOAMA Boeing contact (located at Hill AFB) when a request was coming in from the Air Force. Don Peterson, was our Boeing OOAMA contact...

I was handed the E-Flight CNP assignment when it arrived by the group supervisor. As the internal Boeing project engineer I arranged meetings necessary with management and technical personnel required to determine a course of action to be taken, in exploring why 10 missiles had suddenly fallen from alert status, green to red, with no explanation for it. This was an unusual request and we had no prior similar incident or experience to this kind of anomaly. At the time of the request, no mention was made of an UFO involvement...

Since this was a field site peculiar incident, a determination was made to send out an investigation team to survey the LCF and the LFs to determine what failures or related incidents could be found to explain the cause...there were about 5 persons in all that were sent out. After a week in the field the team returned and pooled their data.

At the outset the team quickly noticed a lack of anything that would come close to explain why the event occurred. There were no significant failures, engineering data or findings that would explain how ten missiles were knocked off alert. This indeed turned out to be a rare event and not encountered before. The use of backup power systems and other technical system circuit operational redundancy strongly suggests that this kind of event is virtually impossible once the system was up and running and on line with other LCF's and LF's interconnectivity.

The only thing that even came close to a failure was that a transformer on a commercial power pole down the road from one of the sites was in the process of failing. It exhibited a intermittent transient type of failure that could have generated noise spikes on the power line. This in itself could not have caused the problem at E-Flight. The problem was reported to the local power company who took action to replace the transformer.

The team met with me to report their findings and it was decided that the final report would have nothing significant in it to explain what happened at E-Flight. In other words there was no technical explanation that could explain the event. The team went off to do the report. Meanwhile I was contacted by our representative at OOAMA (Don Peterson) and told by him that the incident was reported as being a UFO event--That a UFO was seen by some Airmen over the LCF at the time E-Flight went down. Subsequently, we were notified a few days later that a stop work order was on the way from OOAMA to stop any further effort on this project. We stopped. We were also told that we were not to submit the final engineering report. This was most unusual since all of our work required review by the customer and the submittal of a final Engineering report to OOAMA.

Days later, I asked our Boeing OOAMA rep what was going on. His reply to me--off the record---was that the LCF capsule jockeys were suspected of causing the problem somehow by something they did to one of the digital racks in the LCF. The Air Force capsule officers apparently were quietly removed from their job as LCF officers. This part of the story can not be verified by me, as it was hearsay...

Sincerely Yours,
[Robert Kaminski]

END OF LETTER TO KLOTZ

In summary, the Air Force eventually lied about the reasons for the Echo Flight shutdown by telling Boeing rep Don Peterson that the launch officers (James’ father and Walt Figel) had screwed up and had been relieved of their positions. We now know that was a cover story. Kaminski had earlier learned the truth—about airmen reporting UFOs at E Flight—from Peterson. In short, while James Carlson’s ongoing misrepresentations about the shutdown incident Echo Flight may fool a few uninformed persons, the facts are available for anyone who wishes to pursue them.

I don't exactly consider Bob Kaminsky a very good source for anything, but if Robert Hastings wants us to consider this man's testimony, I'll happily do so. I should point out that I'm always a bit concerned when Hastings produces only those bits and pieces of documents that he wants us to see, because he's already proven how unreliable he is as a reporter. This is obviously only part of the letter Kaminsky wrote, not the entire letter. But I have no problem discussing only those parts that Hastings produces, because the truth eventually makes itself known, and so we'll discuss whatever he wants.

Bob Kaminsky is also an author, having published in 1996 a book entitled "Lying Wonders: Evil Encounters of a Close Kind". It looks interesting enough; http://thestrongdelusion.com discusses it momentarily:

"Finally, here is a book that offers timely and fascinating look into some of the strange happenings invading Christianity today ! Bob Kaminski, a Catholic charismatic, explores the trendy new age paronormal experiences and UFO phenomena with a unique and in-depth sight into the consiousness event he calls the Luciferic intiation.

"At key moments in history, God provides extraordinary spiritual insight meant to alert mankind to destructive forces engulfing His creation. We are now at that threshold in time where we can either respond to the warning of God's wisdom or be drawn away by the allure of lying wonders spoken of in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians.

"The old trickster, Lucifer, has left no stone unturned in this attempt to delude mankind into accepting that which is not supported by God's Word. This book will inform the reader and challenge the "many paths to God" teachings espoused by today's new age proponents. In addition, you will see the importance of protecting your mind from deceptive awareness and higher level consciousness experieness-the popular rage."

Well, all of that may be true, but somehow I don't think Robert Hastings or Robert Salas believe that the Echo Flight Incident is the result of a conspiracy that originated in the disturbed bowels of Satan. Kaminsky, in fact, has very little to say specifically about the events at Echo Flight, even in the letter he wrote to James Klotz that Robert Hastings may quote from above but neglects to really discuss in any detail at all, something I'm very prepared to do in light of the fact that Bob Kaminsky really doesn't have that much to say of any interest to me. He has zero credibility, and I will tell you why (something Hastings should probably do for himself on occasion, or accept once and for all that his credibility will remain forever where it is -- in the fantasy basement with folks like Ray L. Wallace, Ray Santilli, Marmaduke Wethere, and the "Weekly World News").

Kaminsky states that he was "the Boeing in-house project engineer for the field team", which is all well and good, but the field team didn't investigate very much, because they were unable to do so without taking down the entire LCC. What they could do was very limited, because -- as any examination of the FOIA documents makes immediately apparent -- they only investigated the incident in relation to the launch facilities, not the launch control center. They did a fine job establishing that although VRSA channel 9 and 12 No-Gos were indicated, there was no actual guidance and control No-Go (channel 9) experienced. The logic coupler, however, was capable of generating both indications, as the field team readily established. The field team established as well that it was possible for an external generated signal (external to the logic in use at the coupler, not the system itself) to cause "the generation of these two channels and shutdown of the launch facilities." However, because they only looked at the system from the perspective of the LFs, they concluded as well that this was a remote possibility "due to the fact that all 10 couplers would have to fail in the flight within a few seconds of each other." This conclusion, the only conclusion that Salas and Hastings have ever taken into account, was simply not true, because the signal wasn't generated at the launch facility, and the launch facility was the only thing the field team that Kaminsky was part of ever ook into account. The FOIA documents represented by the command histories is very clear about this.

Kaminsky states that the incident he was called to work with "was an unusual request and we had no prior similar incident or experience to this kind of anomaly." That may be true about Kaminski specifically, but certainly not regarding other investigators, as the command histories also make very plain. Channel 9 and 12 VRSA indications related to missile failures was definitely very rare, but it had happened once before, at Alpha Flight in December 1966. In fact, once this prior failure was taken into consideration, the investigators were able to determine exactly where they would start looking, and what they would be looking for.

Other statements by Kaminski are equally strange, as they too have been proven false by contemporary documents. We'll examine each of these, something Hastings is apparently incapable of doing for himself, just as he's shown that he's incapable of verifying anything at all that he's supposedly affirmed in relation to this event.

At the outset the team quickly noticed a lack of anything that would come close to explain why the event occurred.

This is incorrect. The fact that they requested all information detailing the electrical actions taken by the capsule crew prior to the incident's commencement, including their use of electrical equipment, electric razors, etc., and the fact that the first thing the field team was to examine the data dump information from the guidance and control units, and put so much effort into examining all aspects of the logic coupler interaction with the rest of the system shows that they were investigating from the beginning the electromagnetic environment. And as the command histories and documents make very plain, they determined very quickly a number of aspects that explained not only "why the event occurred", but how it occurred. Kaminsky's statements are in direct opposition to what we know was determined by the field team and then documented within a few days of the event. It's very apparent that Kaminsky is entirely mistaken in this and involving numerous other points. The only conclusion I can make this nonsense that Hastings is using as some sort of vaidated resource is that Kaminsky doesn't remember what actually occurred very well, Kaminsky is lying for reasons of his own, or this letter did not originate with Kaminsky. The commentary it contains is provably false on many levels. For instance, he again confirms that:

There were no significant failures, engineering data or findings that would explain how ten missiles were knocked off alert. This indeed turned out to be a rare event and not encountered before.

And again, he is plainly wrong. The event at Alpha Flight in December 1966 that is discussed in the command histories and as part of the final report that Kaminsky later asserts in this letter didn't reach any conclusions makes this evident. And the fact that the field team was unable to investigate in any detail the events at the LCC doesn't make their suspicions that the signal was generated there any less valid. The fact that the investigators ultimately determined the problem could be prevented from ever occurring again by properly shielding the equipment that was sensitive to electromagnetic phenomenon proves as well that the investigators were indeed able to explain "how ten missiles were knocked off alert", as well as why it never recurred after shielding and electromagnetic suppression filters were properly installed. By elevating this obvious nonsense to a level above what has already been documented in the daily message traffic and the command histories, Hastings is asking us to rely entirely on resources that cannot be confirmed, hold no worth for historians or researchers, and lack entirely any believable quality whatsoever that would lend them even the slightest veneer of credibility. He is discussing events that have already been established, and getting the facts wrong repeatedly.

The use of backup power systems and other technical system circuit operational redundancy strongly suggests that this kind of event is virtually impossible once the system was up and running and on line with other LCF's and LF's interconnectivity.

No offense, Robert, but this is pure idiocy -- especially coming from a supposed engineer. First of all, backup power systems were failing continuously throughout the entire Minuteman system and had been doing so for years. It was a huge problem for the Air Force, a very well-documented problem that oftentimes resulted in there being no backup at all. Emergency batteries were often in continuous use, and the entire system was overly dependent on the diesel generators. More to the point, however, "technical system circuit operational redundancy" had absolutely nothing to do with the Echo Flight Incident. When you turn a system off at the on-off switch, redundancy doesn't come into play at all. Diesel generators don't automatically come online when you turn off the power -- they come online only when the power fails. Redundancy systems work the same way. If this is what Kaminsky -- an engineer -- actually said, then he's delusional. Echo Flight didn't happen because equipment failed. Read the command and ICBM histories; they're very clear. Echo Flight went down because a generated signal turned it off. Redundancy factors and the backup systems had absolutely nothing to do with it, and the investigators were very well aware of this. And if Hastings is using this treatment as a resource, it's obvious that he either hasn't read what's already been documented, or he didn't understand it. This is a ludicrous discussion, and Kaminsky's take on it is just as ridiculous as Hastings' and Salas' other claims. In fact, the interconnectivity that existed "once the system was up and running and on line with other LCF's and LF's" not only wouldn't have prevented the incident from occurring -- it was necessary for the incident to happen at all. Any electrical break in the system would have stopped it cold. I hate having to keep saying this, but, please, people, my God -- READ THE DOCUMENTS. They aren't that difficult to understand, and they've been available for decades to anybody that actually wanted to look at them. They are confirmed in most cases by the message traffic that was utilized throughout this entire period, and they are extremely thorough.

The only thing that even came close to a failure was that a transformer on a commercial power pole down the road from one of the sites was in the process of failing. It exhibited a intermittent transient type of failure that could have generated noise spikes on the power line. This in itself could not have caused the problem at E-Flight. The problem was reported to the local power company who took action to replace the transformer.

Even this apparently straightforward statement is full of errors. Contrary to Kaminsky's suggestion that the local power company took action only upon being notified of the event by investigators, the power company was very much aware of the matter very shortly after it occurred, as the command history plainly states. "Automatic reclosure switches at Winifred substation opened, and were reclosed manually after transformer replacement later in the day. This caused the Brine Chiller problem at E-1. The transformer was in the West phase. It was not determined which phase this corresponds to at the sites. Sites E-3, E-5, E-6, E-9, and E-10 transferred to Standby Power. Sites E-1 transferred to Direct Current (DC) operation." If that qualifies only as something "close to a failure", I'd hate to know what it takes for Kaminsky to refer to something as an actual "failure". As for his comment that "This in itself could not have caused the problem at E-Flight", this was only determined after the investigating team spent a lot of money and time at the Echo-8 LF working to reproduce this transformer failure, because it created more of a problem than simply the possibility of generating noise spikes, as the command history makes plain. Testing at other commands had already suggested that the LCC to LF cable shielding was more than capable of coupling with a transient signal from the LCC to all of the LFs, so Kaminsky's comment that "This in itself could not have caused the problem at E-Flight" was not a conclusion that his own field team jumped at immediately -- they tested for it, because nobody knew whether it could have happened or not. And this is all confirmed by numerous documents that both Hastings and salas are in the sad habit of completely ignoring simply to give more credence to their ridiculous story of flying saucers knocking off the missiles at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967 -- a sad little story without any credibility to back it up at all.

The team met with me to report their findings and it was decided that the final report would have nothing significant in it to explain what happened at E-Flight. In other words there was no technical explanation that could explain the event.

This is completely wrong as well. The team determined a couple of very important points to take into consideration. "After performing the tests, it was decided that commercial power switching operations were not the cause of the E Flight shutdown." Commercial power switching operations frequently generate internal electronic signals of the very type that caused the incident and necessitates today the inclusion of electromagnetic filters and shielding in complex electrical equipment. The fact that this was even investigated says volumes in regard to what they were looking for. And again, the investigation specifically mentions the electrical grid at Alpha Flight as instrumental to its conclusions. "Similar shutdowns occurred in A Flight LFs which were supplied by power not only from separated substations, but also, from separate feed lines from the generation station."

Another thing the team determined, contrary to Kaminsky's claims, was even more important. "Since the only common item determined in this investigation was the LCC. The LCC power fault transmitted to the LFs on the hardened cable was considered the only power fault capable of causing the Echo Flight incident." That's one of hell of a conclusion for someone to ignore, and yet Robert Hastings wants us to believe that the final report had nothing significant in it. Of course, they couldn't take down the LCC and test all the equipment as they did the LF, but they were confident nonetheless that the signal was generated within or adjacent to the LCC. Kaminsky's field team only examined the LFs, and that's why his report has always been considered incomplete. But to say that no conlusions were reached due to some great and extraordinary mystery is just another example of the stupidity these guys always end up resorting to. Of course, the field team didn't find what they were looking for -- they were looking in the wrong place, and they eventually knew it. "The investigation teams at Malmstrom, were unable to determine a logical cause for the incident. Further investigation in the area of shutdown results will be conducted in an effort to determine a possible cause of this incident. These studies will be conducted at the contractors facility and will be included in the next history."

Kaminsky's role with the field team investigation stopped at this point, so he wasn't party at all to that part of the investigation that did determine the cause of the Echo Flight Incident. But even without this, it plainly obvious to anybody who actually takes the time to examine the evidence that Kaminsky is absolutely wrong at too many points in the story, and completely off the mark with most of his observations. Once again, all Hastings has done is put his trust in a version of events that is obviously and provably absurd. He must be getting used to that by now; I hope doesn't mind it too much if the rest of the world insists on a little bit more valid information before taking the leap of faith that he's apparenly made.

The team went off to do the report. Meanwhile I was contacted by our representative at OOAMA (Don Peterson) and told by him that the incident was reported as being a UFO event--That a UFO was seen by some Airmen over the LCF at the time E-Flight went down. Subsequently, we were notified a few days later that a stop work order was on the way from OOAMA to stop any further effort on this project. We stopped. We were also told that we were not to submit the final engineering report. This was most unusual since all of our work required review by the customer and the submittal of a final Engineering report to OOAMA.

Alright, let's talk about UFOs. It seems that the only thing Kaminsky has to say about UFOs qualifies only as rumor -- and I've detailed very accurately exactly where these rumors came from, so there's really nothing intelligent here either. It's odd that Don peterson would tell him that "the incident was reported as being a UFO event", when we already know that this wasn't done. Had it been "reported" as a UFO event, it would have been investigated as a UFO event by the UFO officer, Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase, as standing orders at every Air Force Command in the country stipulated. But it wasn't. Chase was very open about this, claiming that Echo Flight was not a UFO event at all. Neither my father nor Col.(Ret.) Walt Figel ever spoke with Lt.Col. Chase, which would have been mandatory if a UFO sighting was reported. In other words, the only thing that Kaminsky can attest to is UFO rumors -- and the command histories are very open about this aspect of the matter; in fact, all mention of UFOs in relation to Echo Flight was completely UNCLASSIFIED, and has been so from the very day the documents were first drafted. Both Col. Figel and my father assert that there was no UFO reported by any of the airmen anywhere associated with Echo Flight, so either Peterson or Kaminsky was mistaken or lying. There is NOTHING in anything Kaminsky relates that would give one reason to suspect UFOs were actually involved, and in matters not related to UFOs, Kaminsky repeatedly gets key information and details completely wrong, so he isn't exactly a credible source of information. In the final analysis, he confirms only rumor, and when he discusses facts, he distorts them. In my opinion, if Peterson said anything at all about UFO to Kaminsky, he was discussing rumors that have already -- on numerous occassions -- been accounted for and found to be groundless.

Days later, I asked our Boeing OOAMA rep what was going on. His reply to me--off the record---was that the LCF capsule jockeys were suspected of causing the problem somehow by something they did to one of the digital racks in the LCF. The Air Force capsule officers apparently were quietly removed from their job as LCF officers. This part of the story can not be verified by me, as it was hearsay...

This isn't just hearsay, it's a shameless attack on my father and Col. Figel. It's also a complete lie. The conclusions that Kaminsky claims were never added to his team's report are used liberally as a source for the command histories, which state unambiguously that "Capsule crew have been eliminated as causes of the incident"; any discussion of the "LCF capsule jockeys" will always begin and end with their record as career Air Force officers -- one they continued to add to with great pride for years after the Echo Flight Incident. The fact that Hastings would even mention this in public is little more than another very obnoxious and obvious attack on the truth -- but, frankly, I've gotten used to the strategies he relies on when his arguments fail or are entirely absent -- which is often.

It's apparent that Hastings has published this as an attack, because nobody could be so brain dead to assume, as he wants everyone to believe, that this commentary shows that "the Air Force eventually lied about the reasons for the Echo Flight shutdown by telling Boeing rep Don Peterson that the launch officers (James’ father and Walt Figel) had screwed up and had been relieved of their positions. We now know that was a cover story. Kaminski had earlier learned the truth—about airmen reporting UFOs at E Flight—from Peterson." The Air Force had nothing at all to do with this "off the record" comment supposedly made to Kaminsky -- he very clearly states that the source of this was his "Boeing OOAMA rep", who was attached to Hill AFB; as such he would have certainly been privy to "rumors", but it's absurd to think that the Air Force would have discussed anything of this nature with Peterson, while ignoring entirely representatives of the Foreign Technology Division. There was no cover-up, not even Kaminsky makes that claim, and only an idiot would believe that a cover-up was pulled off by the Boeing OOAMA rep at Hill AFB. Had a cover-up been initiated, Don Peterson would have never mentioned "UFO" to Kaminsky in the first place. And if he was covering up UFOs for the Air Force, all mention of UFOs in the command history would have been classified -- and they weren't. In any case, as an investigator, Kaminsky would have been notified immediately that a UFO was involved if a UFO was really involved -- he wouldn't have been hearing just "rumors" from the Boeing rep. The entire investigation would have been invalid if the engineers investigating were doing so from a position of ignorance, and that's exactly what Hastings is implying. There would have been no need to keep the secret away from the investigators, because anyone privy to the secret would have been legally responsible for the illegal disclosure of such information from the very beginning. Nobody covers up anything by keeping those you already trust in the dark -- if you need to produce a cover up, they need to know that -- otherwise their investigation is not only a waste of time, it might find something you don't particularly want people to discover. You cover up something like this by keeping the information from reaching the public, not those with a valid "need-to-know" as Kaminsky would have certainly represented. It's impossible to carry out an investigation when you don't know what you're supposed to be investigating, so this whole tact is complete nonsense, especially in light of the fact that any investigation of the type Kaminsky was involved with is going to discover that UFOs were reported anyway, if such was actually the case. Remember, they were talking to everybody, and the message traffic related to this case specifically states that everybody was required to cooperate with them. Anybody who saw a UFO would have been required to tell the investigators exactly what they saw. Hearing about it for the first time from the Boeing rep is proof that everything Peterson had to say was simply gossip that had no bearing on the event whatsoever. In addition, you don't cover up something by using a replacement story that can be so easily verified as garbage, which is also what Hastings is implying throughout his examination of this entire story.

There's nothing believable about anything Kaminsky supposedly says in this letter, and Hastings would realize that if he was familiar in any way with what actually happened at Echo Flight, what was actually documented very shortly after the incident itself, and general military culture. His supposed acceptance of this nonsense says more about Hastings' exceptional ignorance of the case than it does about the case itself.

Kaminsky very plainly states that UFOs were mentioned by Peterson during a contact initiated by Peterson, while his discussion of the "LCF capsule jockeys" was made as a result of Kaminsky initiating the contact. This too suggests that there was no cover up -- had there been a cover up, Peterson would have contacted Kaminsky, not the other way around. A cover up isn't something you initiate in response to questions after you've willingly divulged the information you're trying to keep secret. Had there been a cover up such as Hastings describes, Peterson, knowing he had already "let the cat out of the bag" would never have waited a few days for Kaminsky to call him. He would have reacted to the fact that he was the first person to mention UFOs in this context, and immediately contacted Kaminsky to tell him he was mistaken about the UFO. "I got my information all wrong -- sorry, guy." Instead, he waited for Kaminsky to call him, and only then related this alleged "cover story" -- a "cover story" that a single phone call would have easily verified as complete nonsense; and this was a "cover story" that Kaminsky, having already investigated the matter, should have recognized instantly as garbage. Frankly, this whole scenario is just as laughable as everything else Hastings proposes about this matter. These guys were very obviously gossiping, although this whole thing could also represent just one more invention by Salas and Hastings to support their previous invention of flying saucers at Echo Flight. It would make absolutely no sense if it were true. Kaminsky was directly involved in the investigation, not Peterson, so why would Kaminsky have to ask Peterson anything at all regarding it? This entire letter reeks as just another ridiculous fiction. It's the equivalent of Richard Nixon covering up Watergate by claiming that the men who broke into the hotel to plant listening devices were just there to water the plants; it's absurd and it's easily proven as such.

I don't believe Robert Hastings is so stupid as to believe this unwieldy explanation he's proposed. He is, however, very capable of trying to silence those who refute what he says by attacking them or those they care for, such as here when he discusses a rumor involving my father and Col. Figel that has nothing of truth in it, is easily shown to be a falsehood of meaningless proportions, and was never proposed by anybody at anytime as a truthful assertion; supposedly he digs it up out of some old letter to another UFO investigative crony and discusses it while at the same time claiming it's evidence of a cover up, an unbelievably careless assertion that not even the supposed author of the letter would make. It's only purpose, once again, is to raise ineffective doubts for what my father and Col. Figel have repeatedly claimed -- it doesn't even come close to supporting Hastings' thesis unless you're a babbling idiot, and it never should have been raised in defense of Hastings' otherwise indefensible insistence that flying saucers had anything to do with the events at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967. This is exactly what Hastings always resorts to because he has no otherwise valid argument to make. He's done this throughout his campaign against the truth behind Echo Flight, and I'm certain he will continue to do so.

It's very evident that Kaminsky heard nothing more than "rumors" about UFOs from Don Peterson (an assertion which also may not be true, since Kaminsky has given us more than enough reasons to doubt his veracity and the worth of his memories). The later "rumors" about the capsule crew being the cause of the event is obviously absurd, and Kaminsky would have known that immediately because this topic had already been investigated by the field team Kaminsky was part of. Nobody would knowingly jump from one conclusion to another in the way Hastings wants us to believe he has. There's absolutely nothing to indicate that anything Kaminsky has to say came from the Air Force as an official statement, because a cover up is supposed to replace the truth with a believable false story, and this false story is plainly not worthy of belief or even consideration, and yet Robert Hastings feels the need to publicize it nonetheless. The Air Force would never cover up anything so awkwardly and easy to verify as we're supposed to believe here. No offense, Robert, but if you've really been taken in by this ridiculous story and see it as evidence of a cover-up, you're clinically paranoid and need to hospitalize yourself for the safety of others. Since I don't think you're that crazy, you must be asserting this as another brainless attack on my father and Col. Figel, and I don't intend to let you get away with it. Why don't you discuss something instead that supports your little nonsense theories? Could it be you don't have anything except rumors? Could it be that all you've ever been able to attest to is rumors -- nonsensical rumors at that? The only "witnesses" to this event that you have ever proposed have all said the same thing: they didn't see anything even remotely interesting themselves, they heard about a guy who saw something, but they don't know who that guy is, they can't say with any certainty that he actually saw anything at all, because they only heard about it from a third party, and sorry pal but he wasn't very convincing. Good job, Bobby -- you're a hell of an investigative reporter; it's no wonder your little novel is nothing more than one big paraphrase.

Robert Hastings asserts as well that "while James Carlson’s ongoing misrepresentations about the shutdown incident Echo Flight may fool a few uninformed persons, the facts are available for anyone who wishes to pursue them." Indeed, they are Robert. They've been available for decades and they all assert very plainly that you don't know what you're talking about.

I'll happily discuss Robert Hastings' other supposed "witnesses" on another day, but only on this forum.

Most sincerely,
James Carlson
Albuquerque, NM

[James Carlson]

Gentlemen, and Ladies,

Recent communications from Robert Hastings seem to indicate that my statements regarding Col.(Ret.) Walt Figel's discussion of the Echo Flight Incident has resulted in some back and forth between Hastings and Robert Salas (who has been relatively quiet, at least in public, regarding the assertions I have made). Both authors have recently contacted Col. Figel in their attempts to recreate a new bottom line, and Col. Figel was very open and congenial about the entire matter, and the whole thing is almost amusing in light of what I've learned from him and discussed on this forum.

You'll remember that I very recently reported statements he made in one of his emails to me. Specifically, he wrote:

I am not a fan of Salas, Hastings, or the whole UFO crowd.
I have never seen one and flatly don't believe they exist at all.
I just want you to be clear of my position on UFOs.
They make good science fiction -- nothing more.

I have read both of their books.
There are many inaccurate statements and events in the books.
I have told them both that.
For instance, Oscar flight NEVER had any problems and Salas was NEVER involved in any of them at all just for starters.

He reemphasized these comments when I spoke with him on the telephone the following day, asserting as well that he spoke with Robert Salas on two different occasions, mentioning again that nothing had occurred at November or Oscar Flight, implying thereby that his claims were demonstrably false. That is what I understood, and that is how I interpreted his statements.

Upon being "re-interviewed" by both Robert Salas and Robert Hastings, Col. Figel wrote me again, and was, again, very open, congenial, and definitive regarding his experiences on March 16, 1967, and -- once again -- he confirmed everything that my father has ever told me about the Echo light Incident. Specifically, he wrote the following (I've left out some private comments):

James

I guess you must have posted something somewhere that got Hastings attention.
He did call and we did speak for a bit, so did Salas.
You should know that both calls were very cordial as was ours. ...

I have no vested or financial interests in UFOs and actually not even a passing interest in them. Guess I am different from most people. But, I could really care less about the subject.

I reasserted that I personally never did see a UFO at any time.
I do not personally "believe" that UFOs had anything to do with Echo flight shutting down that year.
I repeated that I never heard about an incident at November or Oscar flight and have no knowledge that they ever happened and that I doubted they did.
That is obviously a personal opinion as I can not prove the negative.

I repeated that Colonel Dick Evans was at the alternate command post at Kilo which is in the same squadron as November and Oscar and he never mentioned anything about a shutdown at either of these two flights.

Col. Evans is a very good friend of Col. Figel's; they have remained in touch all of these years, and still live very near each other; Col. Evans worked in the same squadron as Salas did at the time, and his recollections to Figel, as related to me, seems to consist mostly of denials that any such event occurred that he could remember.

If it did happen, I personally don't know anything about it.

One of their books said I had a personal log -- I did not.
The only log I ever filled out was the official log that all flights kept and that I do not and never did have a copy of that log. Obviously I can not remember what I wrote that morning.

One of the books says that the flight shut down in "seconds" -- that is not an exactly accurate statement.
It obviously took some time for your dad and I to run the appropriate checklists and make all the calls that we had to make to the command post and maintenance. We were near the end of the checklist when the second missile shut down and shortly threafter the rest of them followed suit.
That sequence of events took several minutes not seconds, but that is all a very minor point in fact and doesn't change the facts of the overall sequence of events that morning.

I told him [Hastings or Salas] that when someone mentioned UFOs, I just laughed it off as a joke and assumed someone was just kidding around. I never took it seriously.
I also told them [Hastings and Salas] that no one from any UFO office in the Air Force ever interviewed/debriefed your dad and/or me and that I do not remember ever signing any papers about anything.
In fact, I told them that until he mentioned it, I did not even know there was an office that monitored sightings of "UFOs" in the Air Force.

Col. Figel also confirmed that with me on the telephone. He was unaware that there was a command UFO officer, and he was never questioned about UFOs by anybody; had there been a genuine UFO report, Lt.Col. Chase would have been required to investigate it in his role as UFO officer for Malmstrom AFB in accordance with AFR 80-17, which went into effect September 1966.

When your dad and I came topside the next day -- no one ever said anything about UFOs and there was no "large gathering" of people on site that morning.
There may have been later that afternoon, but I would have no knowledge of that as we were long gone back to the base as usual.

I did not know the targeting office's name or even know that he was there.

I did say there was a VRSA recording reporting a "Channel 9 - NO GO" reported.
They [Hastings and Salas] said that the maintenance crews had no such report at the LF.

This is also not true -- the command histories are very clear regarding this matter; VRSA indications at the LCC registered channel 9 and 12 No-Go, while VRSA indications at the LFs registered only channel 9 No-Go. This is simply another attempt by Hastings to rewrite history, so that his "witness" Henry “Hank” Barlow -- who claimed that all VRSA indications read nothing, and had obviously failed -- comes across as more reliable. Except the VRSA at the LFs did not fail, and the command histories prove that; in other words, another one of his "witnesses" has been proven wrong.

I told him that I did not know how the system worked at the missile site so that I do not know if that is possible or not.

Although Hastings' own transcriptions of Col. Figel's interview two years ago confirms that the maintenance personnelman who called in the missile status on the SIN telephone underground at the launch equipment room the morning of March 16, 1967, stated specifically “We got a Channel 9 No-Go. It must be a UFO hovering over the site. I think I see one here.” This is what Col. Figel refers to above regarding a "VRSA recording reporting a 'Channel 9 - NO GO' reported". If the VRSA indications were not functioning as they were supposed to, maintenance could never have phoned in the status of the missiles as "channel 9 No-Go". So Hastings own transcriptions prove as well that VRSA was operating fine, and Barlow's ridiculous story is false. The command history for March 16, 1967 states "The only unusual LF events noted were the failure of the secondary door actuator motor at LF, E-2 and the intermittent operation of the diesel generator at LF, E-8." There's no mention anywhere that VRSA was not operating as it was designed to. It worked just fine, and the indications it recorded helped the investigative field team determine what the problem was that casued the flight to go offline.

I have always maintained that I do not personally believe in UFOs.
I am not convinced that November or Oscar ever happened.

This in reference to Salas' claim that he was at November Flight, which he later changed to Oscar Flight, when the same thing supposedly occurred there, caused again -- supposedly -- by a UFO. There is no contemporary evidence or documentation anywhere suggesting that this event occurred. Col. Figel, partly as a result of his friendship with Col. Evans, does not believe that this incident ever happened. Robert Salas claims that the MCCC on the occasion of this otherwise unrecorded event, was -- at the time -- CAPT Frederick Meiwald. Meiwald has confirmed to me in a personal email that, like my father and Col. Figel, he also does not believe in UFOs, which, of course, means he does not believe UFOs were responsible for anything that may have happened at Oscar Flight, or any other flight he was responsible for.

But these are obviously personal opinions and I can not state them as facts or prove them -- they are my personal beliefs.

I also believe these statements are accurate.
I also believe that is what I said 2 years ago, but I don't have recordings.

Robert Hastings has been very assertive that he does have these recordings -- and he has quoted from them liberally in the above transcription from an original posting of his at http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/fo ... pic=176314 .

So my knowledge is very slim and I have no records about anything at all.
In addition, that was 43 years ago and memories fail - especially about things that were not especially important to me at the time. ...

So if this is a help, so be it.

Col.(Ret.) Walter Figel has stated as well that he does not wish to be involved in any long standing debate regarding UFOs, asserting that he would rather "leave that to the experts and researchers and those who know or at least truly believe that they know. After all they may be right and proven so some day. As for me, I'll just go my way as a skeptic until proven wrong."

He also mentioned that he sent a copy of this same email to Robert Hastings, indicating again that he would rather not be questioned regarding this event again. He affirmed that his written statement above is clear and discusses exactly what happened. I'd like to note as well that his statements reflect exactly what my father has told me, and what Col. Figel told me as well last week on the telephone. I told him in response to this email that as far as I was concerned, his very definitive statement was indeed very clear, and that I would respect his privacy regarding the matter, and would not raise the topic again with him. Robert Hastings and Robert Salas are free, of course, to do as they will. Although it's true that Robert Hastings, at least, tends to reinterview his witnesses whenever I discuss how ridiculous prior statements sound in the context of a military environment -- note the reinterview above that Hastings conducted with Col. Figel after I questioned his interpretation of those events two years ago -- I can only hope that Hastings will accept this final statement of Figel's with good grace, and will quit bothering him regarding this very old, very much closed incident.

I'll happily discuss Robert Hastings' other supposed "witnesses" on another day, but only on this forum.

Most sincerely,
James Carlson
Albuquerque, NM

[James Carlson]

Gentlemen, and Ladies,

I'd like to continue with more discussions and issues from the Echo Flight front. The following comments were made by Robert Hastings at http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/fo ... pic=176314 .

Posted 04 March 2010 - 10:05 PM

In response to James Carlson's claims of no UFO involvement in the shutdown of nuclear missiles at Malmstrom AFB in March 1967, I offer the following verbatim excerpt from the testimony of retired USAF Lt. Col. Dwynne Arneson. The full statement may be found at: ... (please see http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com)

EXCERPT:

My name is Dwynne Arneson. I was born in Rochester, Minnesota back in 1937, and went to Rochester High School. From there I graduated and went on to St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota where I got my degree in physics and math. Upon graduation, I competed for Officer’s Training School in the Air Force and then was selected to get a commission, went to Officer’s Training School, and was commissioned back in 1962. I went on to spend twenty-six years in the U.S. Air Force as a communication-electronics officer and retired in 1986.

I held a top-secret SCI-TK clearance. That means Special Compartmented Tango Kilo information, which is above top secret, if you will. It takes a special investigation to get that sort of a clearance. Upon getting out of the Air Force, and retiring as a colonel in 1986, I applied for work at Boeing, and I came to work for Boeing as a computer systems analyst, and I’ve been working since 1987 in that capacity with Boeing. I retired in 1986 as Director of Logistics at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

...The next thing that comes to mind is one that took place in 1967. I was in charge of the Communication Center, the Twentieth Air Division at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana. I was again the top-secret control officer there. I dispatched all the nuclear launch authentications to the SAC missile crews, so I had a very good top-secret background. One day, I happened to see a message that came through my communications center. There again, I cannot quote the date, where it came from, where it was going to, but I do recall reading it and seeing it. It said, basically, that "A UFO was seen near missile silos" and it was hovering. It said that the crew going on duty and the crew coming off duty all saw the UFO just hovering in mid-air. It was a metallic circular object and from what I understand, the missiles were all shut down...What I mean by "missiles going down," is that they went dead. And something turned those missiles off, and so they could not be put in a mode for launching.

END OF EXCERPT

James Carlson always claims that those who disagree with his take on things are lying. He will no doubt do the same with Lt. Col. Arneson.

Robert Hastings
http://www.ufohastings.com

Well, Robert -- I'm stunned. The first thought that comes to mind is a quote from the above statement of your "witness" (who's really little more than just another non-witness witness from the increasingly irrelevant Hastings archive): "There again, I cannot quote the date, where it came from, where it was going to, but I do recall reading it and seeing it." Yes, Robert, you are undeniably wasting everybody's time once again with your long and continuing series of nonsense reports that undeniably affirm ... absolutely nothing.

On the other hand, we can examine the 341st Strategic Missile Wing and 341st Combat Support Group HQ SAC DXIH 67-1865 (Command History, Vol. 1) for March 1967, as well as the collected USAF communications documents related to the incident and note immediately that there is no reference anywhere in any of that data that reflects such an event in relation to Echo Flight, and we have copies of many of messages that discuss this event. In addition, while Arneson claims "that the crew going on duty and the crew coming off duty all saw the UFO just hovering in mid-air", the testimony of both the on-going and off-coming crews of Echo Flight are very strenuous in their agreement that nothing was seen by anybody. It's difficult to imagine why any researcher, let alone one with the 30-years of research experience that Robert Hastings claims every chance he gets, would imagine that this description applies to any real event whatsoever, let alone one that has been as well-documented as the Echo Flight Incident of March 16, 1967. There's no need for me to claim that this man is lying -- he hasn't said anything at all that anybody could possibly apply to this discussion. You'd have to be an idiot to believe that this commentary is a discussion of Echo Flight, or, indeed, and specific event whatsoever.

The only thing that Arneson can reliably testify to is that Robert Hastings will literally believe anything anybody says about this event, as long as they toss a flying saucer in there someplace. Did you even TRY to verify anythig that this guy has told you? Granted, he hasn't said much, but my God, Robert, the least you could have done is try to get him to nail down the date just a little bit. I mean, jeez, "I cannot quote the date, where it came from, where it was going to" doesn't exactly qualify as -- well, hell ANYTHING, really. And if you plant that testimony in the Communication Center at the Twentieth Air Division at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, like you've done here, you're liable to grow just about anything you want except something of value. The fact that you would even mention this very evident pile of nothing proves exactly how little evidence you've got to validate your ridiculous little science fiction story. In order to preserve two-man integrity at any of the flights, security protocol necessitated about an hour for a proper turnover between crews, In other words, if Arneson's claims are true, there was a flying saucer hovering over E-1 from at least 0845 in the morning until after this turnover was completed. So if we believe this testimony, as Hastings apparently has, this flying saucer hovered over E-1 after an entire flight of missiles went offline for well over an hour -- at minimum -- and the USAF did absolutely nothing in response, and nobody in the civilian community or elsewhere on Malmstrom AFB saw a thing. God, Robert -- You're convinced by this?

There's documented proof that "Capt. Bradshaw in the command post at the time of the Echo Flight incident, verified that there was no activity on the Primary Alerting System (PAS) at Echo Flight." This is directly quoted from the classified "Report of Engineering Investigation of Echo Flight Incident, Malmstrom AFB, Mont - 16 Mar 67", drafted by the Engineering Investigation Team, 23 Mar 67. This statement was on page 26 of the document that Hastings' other witness, Bob Kaminsky, apparently claimed "would have nothing significant in it to explain what happened at E-Flight." Well, it certainly narrowed the field down a bit, didn't it, Robert? By stating that the PAS was silent, Capt. Bradshaw confirms that there were no incoming or outgoing alerts in relation to the events at Echo Flight -- not even a communications check, which surely would have been the minimum reaction to such an event Arneson is describing.

More importantly, if Dwynne Arneson was genuinely "in charge of the Communication Center, the Twentieth Air Division at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana", then he would also have seen all of the INFO ONLY messages that went through that particular command office. And that's pretty important, because, since he "cannot quote the date, where it came from, where it was going to" as he willingly admits, the incident he's attesting to without actually divulging any details could have involved any missile command. As such, it's basically useless. But, I've discovered that's true of pretty much true of everything that Robert Hastings has EVER said on the subject of Echo Flight.

Oh, and I almost forgot -- which is surprising, really, because this is the funniest thing ever about this particular non-witness witness. In 1967 the 20th Air Division that he claims to have worked for was responsible for the air defense of parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and all of Illinois. It was primarily attached to Truax AFB, Wisconsin; in December 1967 the 20th AD was reassigned to Fort Lee AFS, Virginia. It was never, throughout its entire history, attached to Malmstrom AFB. As a result, we know that not only is Arneson lying about this incident he describes, we know that Robert Hastings never even bothered to confirm this individual's claim -- and this is an incredibly EASY claim to confirm. Good job, Bobby!

Once again, another of Hastings' witnesses retires with nothing very interesting to add to this discussion.

I'll happily discuss Robert Hastings' other supposed "witnesses" on another day, but only on this forum.

Most sincerely,
James Carlson
Albuquerque, NM

[astrophotographer]

I agree that this witness testimony means little by itself. Saying he read a report somewhere on some date of a UFO sighting (which could have been anytime in the period he was stationed there) and that he recalls missiles being shutdown could easily be explained by "rumors" of UFOs being circulated about the time of the Echo flight incident. We are speaking about memories that are 30-40 years old and it would not be difficult to relate something like the Belt Mt sighitng, which was in the local media, to the Echo event over a week before. All it would take is a little prodding by Hastings or hearing Salas tell his story, for the man to suddenly think he remembers something similar.

[Access Denied]

Recent communications from Robert Hastings seem to indicate that my statements regarding Col.(Ret.) Walt Figel's discussion of the Echo Flight Incident has resulted in some back and forth between Hastings and Robert Salas (who has been relatively quiet, at least in public, regarding the assertions I have made). Both authors have recently contacted Col. Figel in their attempts to recreate a new bottom line, and Col. Figel was very open and congenial about the entire matter, and the whole thing is almost amusing in light of what I've learned from him and discussed on this forum.

Good work James. It would appear Hastings and Salas’ “smoking gun” is yet another empty water pistol after all. Given this well-documented recent exchange with Mr. Figel and your freely available book, I imagine that may put a damper on the $15,000 they’re trying to raise for their National Press Club “press conference”…

[read book and lecture promotional tour]

UFO Activity at Nuclear Weapons Sites to be Revealed at the National Press Club: Your Assistance is Needed!
http://www.ufohastings.com/PressPage.html

UFO researcher Robert Hastings and former U.S. Air Force Captain Robert Salas are currently organizing a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to address the vital issue of UFO incursions at U.S. nuclear weapons sites over the past six decades. The purpose of the event is to focus worldwide media attention on the reality and importance of the situation.

As if the "reality" is that UFOs have been identified as alien spaceships and officials couldn't handle the "situation" on their own.

To finance this event, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Salas are soliciting funds to cover the participants' travel expenses, hotel accommodations and meals, as well as costs associated with the preparation of press kits. It is estimated that $15,000 will be required to fund the occasion.

I hope they appreciate our assistance and my $0.02…

The silence is deafening isn’t it?

Mr. Hastings, I do believe the floor is yours…

[You Can Call Me Ray]

soliciting funds to cover the participants' travel expenses, hotel accommodations and meals, as well as costs associated with the preparation of press kits. It is estimated that $15,000 will be required to fund the occasion.

Ahhhh yes, but UFOlogy is all about soliciting funds. Isn't it? Or at least there sure do seem to be a lot of "true believers" who are also soliciting funds for their "UFO coverup exposure" work. I wonder if there is some connection there...?

Excuse me for thinking out loud, but this is why I always ignore the vast majority of what goes on in UFOlogy (with Exopolitics being the foremost thing to be ignored). It never polices itself, and is chock-full of yea-hoos who are soliciting funds. Sorry, but I fund things with my money that are demonstrably real. It is a "closed-minded fault" that I have being an engineer by trade...

Ray

[astrophotographer]

I am sure that Hastings and Salas have made their share of $$$ from promoting their books, appearing at UFO conferences, etc. Why can't they provide the money? Why can't these individuals pay their own way? Certainly UFO groupies often pay their own way to UFO conferences to hear these people speak. Why doesn't Hastings front the money. Certainly, his speaking fees could help pay for this.

[James Carlson]

I'm curious if anyone has heard from Robert Hastings lately -- his silence regarding a number of matters is somewhat deafening. He still hasn't bothered to answer the 50 or so questions I put to him on ATS a while back -- and that's something he promised he would get to after his neat little paid appearance in Alaska. I'm nearly finished reviewing his witness Hank Barlow's recollections regarding Echo Flight, and will post it when I've done so. Basically, though, Hastings has found another non-witness witness who didn't see anything and can't name any individuals who did. In addition, everything that he admits to witnessing himself can be easily proven wrong. So he didn't see anything interesting himself, and what he does claim to have seen, didn't happen. I don't have any opinion whatsoever regarding other cases that Hastings discusses in his book, but if the quality of "evidence" he presents is anything like the quality he presents for Echo Flight, why would anybody pay anything at all to listen to his little lecture? After all, you could take $6.00, buy a copy of Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and not only get more fact out of it, you'd get more entertainment as well!

[Access Denied]

Well, the last I heard from Hastings he wanted to know if I had heard any news re: Doty and Collins and mentioned that apparently Collins just published the latest edition of Exempt From Disclosure which was news to me.

Now that you mention it though, I also recall him mentioning that he was scheduled to have some surgery done this Monday (today) I believe and he promised to post something after recovering so I guess we should be patient for now…

As far as his lectures go, I don’t know. His “Spring 2010 Lecture Schedule” is posted at UFO Chronicles and it says to check each school’s website for location and time but I couldn’t find any of the next three scheduled for April on their calendars… not sure what to make of that.