I did say there was a VRSA recording reporting a “Channel 9 – NO GO” reported.
They said that the maintenance crews had no such report at the LF.
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.
Let me tell you how that came about first, because it's relevant.
In March 2010 after I published here at Reality Uncovered the first discussion of Figel's claims to me regarding Echo Flight, Hastings and Salas immediately called him to confirm what he had reported (it was within two days, I believe, possibly three). Right after doing so, Hastings contacted the owners of Reality Uncovered and told them that I had been lying about what Figel told me, and that he would (within a few days) post the audio tapes and transcripts of his discussion with Figel, proving that he had not denounced the Echo Flight UFO nor his and Salas' discussion of it, but had reaffirmed its and their importance to the case. He promised as well to release a "comprehensive rebuttal" to the whole incident of Figel's alleged denunciation of the UFO claims as I had published it.
As soon as I was told about this email from Hastings, I immediately contacted Figel and asked him what he told Hastings and Salas and whether he had indeed denied what he had told me only a few days earlier. The quote above is from his reply, a response that is basically a summary of everything he told Hastings and Salas on the telephone during that conversation Hastings referred to. The quote above indicating "They said that the maintenance crews had no such report at the LF" is a reference to the testimony of Hastings' witness Barlow, who stated that VRSA was not working at all at the LFs. This is a factually incorrect statement. The documents discuss VRSA as working just fine, and indicate that it was due to VRSA that the investigation's suppositions regarding the LCC logic couplers first came to light.
It was obvious from the questions that Hastings and salas had asked him that they were trying to determine whether his recent denunciation would affect in any way the statements of their remaining witnesses (it wouldn't have made much difference; their other witnesses have far more problems with their testimony than anything Figel could hint at). For instance, they probably asked him if he could prove that no such event happened at Oscar Flight. He stated "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. If it did happen, I personally don’t know anything about it."
They may have asked him about the problems with the chronology that I had mentioned elsewhere, and he responded, "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."
They asked him about the alleged UFO, and the supposed debriefing that he received afterwards, including going to Omaha. He repsonded, "I told him 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 that no one from any UFO office in the Air Force ever interviewed/deriefed 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.
"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."
They probably asked him about Jamison's testimony and whether or not he was claiming that Jamison's testimony could not be trusted. He responded, "I did not know the targeting office’s name or even know that he was there." Since Jamison claims to have been at Oscar Flight a week later, this seems irrelevant, but I don't remember any other targeting officer being mentioned by anybody off the top of my head, so maybe it refers to someone else.
As I said above, they asked about VRSA at the LFs to substantiate Barlow's testimony; it was a useless attempt; VRSA has been well documented, and Barlow's an obvious flake, so there's nothing there either.
He closed by saying "As you can see, I cc’d Hastings so that you both have the same piece of paper. I don’t think that there are any inconsistencies in what I said to either of you. If there are, I’m sorry, that is not my intention at all." Hastings insisted for nearly a year afterwards that I had never spoken to Col. Figel, which is a proven lie, so in my opinion, nothing he says can be trusted -- he's shown far too much reliance on lies to merely trust his claims without something to back them up.
As for VRSA, Figel has never indicated that there was a problem with VRSA, and I'm sure Hastings simply intended to use Figel's ignorance regarding how VRSA worked in combination with Barlow's charges that VRSA was not working to establish an argument involving Figel's admission that he didn't know how VRSA worked. Obviously, that's an opinion. The argument wouldn't have worked due to the great importance VRSA played in the troubleshooting process, but Hastings is not terribly bright, so I'm sure this was what he was ultimately intending -- this or something similar to cast doubt on what Figel had already said. Anyway, I published Figel's summary of his discussions with Hastings and Salas as soon as I could, and Hastings never did publish any phone call transcripts nor a "comprehensive rebuttal" of anything. I'm convinced he would have tried had I not beaten him to the punch. He probably would ave had recrded audio as well, just like he's published everywhere else in regard to this case. I doubt they can be trusted, however, and the fact that he threatened to produce such materials, but failed to do so only after I published first an account of what those phone calls actually dealt with should come as no surprise to anybody who has held such suspicions in regard to Hastings' "evidence".
As for the VRSA reporting, it indicated both a Channel 9 No-Go and a Channel 12 No-Go in the LCC; at the LFs there were only Channel 9 No-Go reports. This indicated that there was a problem within the logic coupler at the LCC, and that's precisley where the investigation concentrated its efforts once they had satisfied themselves that an outside source could not possibly have shut down all ten missiles in the flight.
The first thing the capsule crew needed to accomplish (aside from making all of the necessary phone calls notifying the chain of command regarding the loss of the missiles from deterrent forces) was to get an accurate confirmation of missile status from the LFs, and that was Figel's primary responsibility. During my first phone call with him, I reiterated the incident of the Channel 9 No-Go confirmation, and he confirmed all of it. He said it took another 3-4 hours befoe the shift ended, and most of that time they were making telephone calls and issuing orders, but he was very clear that the first thing they needed to do was to confirm the missile status at as many of the LFs as possible. Those at which strike teams had been encamped at were, of course, dealt with first, and that is exactly what Hastings' transcripts state as well. I honestly don't know why there would be any discussion of the process, unless you doubt as well that VRSA was operating properly, as Barlow has stated. If that's the case, just let me know and I'll look up the exact references discussing VRSA in the FOIA materials.
