Some of the Roswell Riddle examined

a reply to: Ophiuchus1

Is that the Linda we all know and ...I can't say it...it starts with an L and I don't mean love

originally posted by: peaceinoutz
a reply to: Ophiuchus1

Is that the Linda we all know and ...I can't say it...it starts with an L and I don't mean love

Not Linda Moulton Howe


Linda G. Corely Ph.D interviewing Jesse Marcel at his home


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a reply to: Ophiuchus1

You mean there's two of em!

a reply to: Ophiuchus1

There's an interesting story behind Corely's interview with Marcel..

New Words From Marcel on Roswell Crash

30 September 1999

According to a previously unknown 1981 interview, Jesse Marcel, the Roswell Air Force Base intelligence officer who transformed UFO history when he recovered pieces of an unidentified object in the desert, maintained to the end of his life that the object was no weather balloon.

Linda Corley, who interviewed Marcel five years before his death, closed the 1999 National UFO Conference with a largely impressionistic portrait of the man's last years in Houma, LA, where she still lives.

Corley contacted Marcel after a college professor told her class to interview "an interesting person." The resulting four-hour conversation between Marcel, his wife, Viaud, and Corley took place around the Marcels' kitchen table on May 5, 1981, and was recorded on an inexpensive student cassette player.



One of the most significant details to emerge from the discussion was the fact that Marcel firmly denied having seen alien corpses in the wreckage.

"Had there been bodies of aliens in the debris, I would have picked them up and brought them in," Corley quoted him as saying.

Not a balloon

Even in the absence of aliens, Marcel remained convinced that the wreckage was not, as the Air Force has since maintained, part of a downed top-secret balloon.

"The material was unusual," Corley said he told her. " It couldn't have been a balloon. It was porous, it couldn't hold air."

To the best of Marcel's knowledge, the military kept all of the strange metallic fabric that predominated the debris, along with the structural elements that looked like wood but didn't burn.

He had little patience for either the original explanation that the "flying disk" recovered from Roswell was part of a weather balloon, or the official story of a highly classified Mogul spy balloon that emerged later.

The infamous photograph of Brigadier General Roger Ramey displaying the wreckage was unquestionably a fake, he said, staged later "strictly for the press."

"Publicity is not what I want"

Significantly, Marcel does not come across in the Corley interview as a man making up an outlandish story to get attention and possibly money as well, as skeptics have claimed.

"Publicity is not what I want," she quotes him as saying. "I feel like I'm a nobody and I'm going to stay a nobody … talk about these things and they get a net after you."

Nor was he a "true believer" interested in spreading his story to win public support for the UFO cause.

"I became disinterested" with UFOs, he said. "There's something wrong with me -- I'm still curious, but I'm not reading."

Patriotism, silence and their rewards

Marcel described himself as a young man to Corley as being extremely ambitious, "like ten cats on a hot tin roof," a characterization borne out by more than 8 years of active military duty.

Still, he left the army at a relatively young age in 1950, whereupon he learned he had received a "stealth promotion" to the rank of lieutenant colonel in December, 1948. The file explaining the promotion had been misplaced, he told Corley.

Corley now says Marcel felt unable to tell her everything he knew about certain subjects, quoting him as saying, "I left the service, but remain loyal to the country and a vow I took to keep my mouth shut."

That very vow may explain why he called her a few weeks after the interview in a "frantic" mood to tell her that everything he had said had been a lie. He insisted that she not release the information to the press, and so she kept the interview out of the public eye for more than a decade, not even turning it in as part of her school assignment.

"My heart really went out to him because he sounded so scared," she said.

Even Memorex fades

Instead, she kept the tapes on the shelf, unplayed but preserved as a testament to the possibly "unique information" they held. By the time Stanton Friedman heard of the interview and asked Corley to release the tapes, they had already decayed and were of dubious use to him.

"It seemed I had waited too long," she said. Instead, the faded recordings forced her to transcribe the interview herself, she said, using her likewise transitory memories to fill in the gaps. She also made use of a new cassette player that "cleaned" the tapes during playback.

Although Friedman returned two of the three tapes to her in 1995 and the third in 1996, Corley held back on releasing the material until Mrs. Marcel's recent death, she said.

Working with the tapes evidently stirred a profound wave of nostalgia in Corley, as she waxed rhapsodic about the feeling of listening to the innocent and enthusiastic voice of her girlhood after all the years. She framed the afternoon with the Marcels as an almost holy moment, an event somehow set outside time by her own proximity to the golden age of flying saucers and the catastrophic interruption of Roswell.

Corley named the trees in the Marcels' backyard, showed slides of the suburban house and the elderly couple slouched over their kitchen table. The event has so ingrained itself in her emotional makeup that she has spent apparently vast amounts of time and energy doodling the "pink and purple" marks -- often called an example of some alien alphabet in the literature -- in various patterns and color schemes.

Earnestness or artifice?

If Corley can exude such apparent yearning and personal attachment to a hoax, then her hoax is one of extraordinary complexity, and such is unlikely to be the case. Despite initial doubts to the contrary, I am now convinced that Corley's material does in fact derive from a conversation with Marcel, and I apologize for the unconsciously negative tone of my earlier comments on the topic.

Her somewhat formal public speaking style and outsider's willingness to retrace details that are common knowledge in the Roswell field may well be the marks of an authentic novice thrust by circumstance into the eye of UFOlogy.

Her prepared speech -- of a dozen NUFOC speakers, she is the only one I remember reading from pre-written sheets -- wandered down blind alleys of recollection with all the apparent earnestness of the college psychology paper that it was once meant to be. Like Marcel's memories of a bright summer day decades gone, the conversation of 1981 may have lacked systematic rigor, but that itself may be the hallmark of a different flavor of truth.

Original Source

This was the last time Marcel gave an interview about Roswell before he passed away. But the details remained under wraps until the late 90s.

So no aliens in his story. Yet he also believed for whatever reason that the material was not of "this earth".

a reply to: mirageman

That’s the book I mentioned I’m reading here and there on another thread……

It’s a decent read so far……I’ve been cherry-picking reading parts at a time




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I don’t at all think Marcel was qualified to determine what is of this world or not.

The book Roswell and the will to believe and the Ectoplasm8 post clearly prove that that material and the material from the Mogul device were similar enough to verify that was what landed at Roswell.

That’s what the evidence proves to my satisfaction.

Anyone who has any refutations of that evidence their welcome to give it here.

a reply to: peaceinoutz

I don’t at all think Marcel was qualified to determine what is of this world or not.

Me neither. Especially when a number of news reports from the day described the debris as tape, sticks, tin-foil and paper.

I noted he told Corley in the piece posted earlier....

...he called her a few weeks after the interview in a "frantic" mood to tell her that everything he had said had been a lie. He insisted that she not release the information to the press

So he might have enjoyed spinning yarns about his military days and then realized how things were spinning out of control. Or maybe Jesse was suffering from early signs of dementia?

he called her a few weeks after the interview in a "frantic" mood to tell her that everything he had said had been a lie. He insisted that she not release the information to the press

a reply to: mirageman

Wow, that's revealing.

People get wound up in other people's enthusiasms for reasons having to do with the desire to be liked and things like that.

He thought better of himself or was afraid.

a reply to: mirageman

Let’s play some …..shall we?

Below is the I-Beam hand drawn and signed by Jesse Marcel Jr.

We must note that Jr. was a very young boy being woken up in the middle of his sleep, to go to the kitchen and see and handle debris pieces including what he later in life, describes as an ornamental I-Beam in purplish color with symbols and precise measurements. Keep in mind, as a youngster, he’s tired, sleepy and more than likely wants to go back to bed……as any of us would want to do at his age and that late at night. Btw, doesn’t things look large in small hands?



Now Jesse Marcel Sr., back in the day….was an Intelligence Officer for the base….one could assume he had a sharp mind, and was able to be meticulous about details and memory. Fast forward to 1981…he’s 74 years old or young depending on your perspective.

Below is a hand drawing by Jesse Marcel Sr. of the beam as he remembered it describing it to Linda Corley the interviewer including the symbols and color that he still remembers.





I guess the question is who are you going to side with? the memory of Jesse Jr. from when he was a kid…..or the memory of Jesse Sr. from when he was an professional adult? Given all the previous analysis, official reports, etc.

What say you, or anybody?…

Below….Linda Corley …took to artistic licensing and used the symbols that Jesse Sr. drew, to use in some artwork of her own…



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originally posted by: crayzeed
Well let me see. You have a first hand witness to the Roswell crash AND the resulting debris. Not second hand he said she said.

At that time a Lt. Colonel Marcel ( note!!!! the bomber group intelligence officer) at that time KNEW what a Mogul array was and what it consisted of. Yet to debunk the UFO story he was ordered to be photo'd with balloon material. After he left the service and before he died, from his own mouth, says that he was ordered to use the cover story and the debris he found at Roswell was in his words " not of this earth, extra-terrestrial". Now this is an intelligence officer who WOULD KNOW what materials were. So why does his testimony get disparaged. He handled the stuff, he said the properties of the material were not what the US even had.

Who did he make this confession to after he left the service? Did he contact somebody at the media? Was this confession filmed? Was the audio at least recorded of him confessing? Did he hand write out a letter of this confession and sign it? Maybe got a couple witnesses to sign it as well? Did he confesss this to multiple people? Did he confess it to different multiple people at different times? I'm just curious, I know the Roswell story fairly well but that was a long time ago and looked on line a bit but didn't see anything about this confession and who it was too?

When did this confession come to light to the public? I assume it was after he died? Who brought the confession to the public?

a reply to: MisguidedAngel

Marcel did not pipe up publicly until the late 1970s. He was interviewed for the mystery show of the time "In Search Of" here;

For posterity as well. Here is Glenn Dennis recounting a pack of lies.




If you go to the Youtube page it is hosted by US National Archives and credits are as follows:

W. Glenn Davis Interview, 11/19/1990

Creator(s): Department of Defense. Department of the Air Force. Office of the Secretary. Office of the Administrative Assistant. Office of the Deputy for Security and Special Investigative Programs. Research Declassification Team. (1987 - ) (Most Recent)....

Not only have they printed Dennis's name incorrectly as Davis, this interview was conducted by Don Schmitt, Mark Wolf and Kevin Randle.It was part of their ongoing research in November 1990 . It was later used as part of the Roswell investigations conducted by the USAF in the mid 90s and filed away. Subsequently, this video has been posted on the internet in 2019 on the National Archive site, giving an entirely false impression as to its origins and that Dennis's lies haven't been exposed.

Kevin Randle has filed a complaint about this. But 3 years later no action has been taken.

For more information : Glenn Dennis and the Interview on YouTube



Despite Randle complaining about how misleading this appears

This I-beam has been an exaggerated portion of the story when Marcel states initially small sticks. You can see how he drew a stick shape, not an I-beam in the 2nd photograph of the book posted.

Not I-beams which puts into mind metal beams with stamped symbols. It's actually small wooden lightweight balsawood-like beams some which had been strengthened with glue for the longer and the higher flights required. Wooden sticks/beams that were the structure or form for radar reflectors/targets. Since my thread, I found the toy company that made the ML307C/AP radar target/reflectors. The Alox kite company was tasked with making these radar targets. The foil panels had been attached to the beams for strength using tape which had Chinese style symbols that the company had. Brazel even said in his July 1947 newspaper article: "Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it" was used.
Here's a photo of the style radar target that was made and a part of the article saying how Alox was involved in their creation:


Alox Kites

I keep stressing they used the same time tested method of the weather balloons for Mogul but needed to experiment with the number of balloons and balloon materials for higher flights and prolong periods of time aloft with a number of radar targets for radar reception as well.

Strength of materials was needed and an important part of Mogul for those longer and higher flights. The NYU team in Alamogordo was working on those requirements at the time. The paper backed foil for example would have been unusual. Glue soaked wooden members would have been seen as odd, tape with Chinese characters would have been strange, the sheer size in comparison to a weather balloon wouldn't have made sense. You also have to remember this was all during  a heightened state of things seeing as the crash was at a time of the recent UFO sightings with newspapers focusing on those sighting to the point of offering a reward for the capture of a saucer. UFOmania would have been a subject thick in the air. All the things above could have been seen as exotic enough to POSSIBLY be one of those "saucers". Remember too UFO didn't have the same connotations or meaning as it does today.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: MisguidedAngel

Marcel did not pipe up publicly until the late 1970s. He was interviewed for the mystery show of the time "In Search Of" here;

Thanks bro, gonna watch now!

a reply to: mirageman

Thus usual suspect pseudo-skeptics make their way to every Roswell thread.

"I bet most don't know that Rowell is a two-crash event. Or maybe three cash sites." True statement.

"The CIA was formed in September 1947 as a result of the Roswell crash." Anyone who knows. anything knows the CIA was the evolution of the OSS. Either you are ignorant of the fact or adding misleading content to the thread. Of course, Dir AD and RH were leading investigatory efforts but the Cold War had many purposes for the CIA and UFO's were just a subpart under a directorate or SAP.

The NS Act and NS Agency was formed as a result of the Roswell crash and three others that started occurring around the same timeframe because of the confusion and flow of intelligence resulting from inter service confusion. I have seen a briefing paper at the DIA which explains this somewhat. I can only imagine the power play resulting in disinformation, deception, and distraction between the Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA, FBI under Hoover, occurring over this new post-war phenomena. Oh, and BTW, and then the DIA and NATO were formed and became involved and controlling some of these issues (crash sites, what the other side knew, and intrusions).

I won't even start on MJ - I don't want to get Mirageman started. That jury is still out but I respect the good research by some.

tomwhitmoreblog.wordpress.com...

Was Roswell a red herring? I don't know what happened at Roswell, but I do know about the other crash sites. You either were part of the various projects or you were not - and that's a sad thing for the Constitution, democracy, truth, and the good ole' USA, IMO.

The beat goes on as protagonists and skeptics keep guessing and hypothesizing about this matter/myth.

well if Roswell was / is a government plot to deceive, distract and confabulate

seems to be working.

a reply to: Ectoplasm8

I side with the Jesse Sr. and wood Stick’s……not Jesse Jr. and metallic I-Beam’s

From Jesse Sr.’s exchange with Mrs. Marcel, in the interview with Linda Corley 1981…..



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As for the so called “Hieroglyphics”…….

As I read further……I can’t help but now agree with what Linda Corely heard from Jesse Sr. and Mrs. Marcel during the interview.

Whereas, from the dialogue below, Mrs. Marcel admits she should have said “Symbols”

It appears to me that an impressionable young 11 year old boy, Jesse Jr. latched on to hearing his mother say “Hieroglyphics” and that word stuck with Jesse Jr. the rest of his life.




Drawn by Jesse Sr.’s own hand for Linda…..an example of the Symbols



Symbols Yes……Hieroglyphics No

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a reply to: Ophiuchus1
I never did connect the characters on the sticks/wooden beams to hieroglyphics.  Hieroglyphics meaning a form of written communication. That would have a strong and different meaning to it if that was found. It was always Chinese symbols or characters that I could picture in my mind you would see on a package of fireworks or something. That different style of graphics they would use. I've always put more stock in Mac Brazels description of "flowers printed upon it". I can see in my mind the tape that was claimed to be used with a purple hue with Asian style flowers printed on it.

In statement made by Mogul balloon flight engineer Charles Moore:
"I do remember every time I prepared one of these targets for flight, I always wondered why these figures were on the tape. There was always a question of why they were there, When this purplish-pink marking on the debris came up, I immediately remembered this sort of marking. Other people, I have a letter
here from one of my technicians, who says oddly he remembers the same marking."

Mogul Project Officer Albert Trakowski:
"I remember so clearly when the contractor for these targets was
selected, and Jack thought it was the biggest joke in the world that they had to go to a toy manufacturer to make these radar targets. Then it was even a bigger joke when it turned out that because of wartime scarcities of materials, the tape that they used to assemble these targets, the reflecting material on the balsa
frames, was some kind of a pinkish purple tape with a heart and flower design on it."

So a type of leftover tape used by Alox kites that couldnt be used in production on pubically sold products was used on the radar targets to strengthen the bond to the wooden sticks.

We have several members that worked on the balloon project saying they remember this odd tape and symbols. Of course conspirisist will say that's just fabricated to further support governments cover. I think it logically fits and explains these foreign looking characters .

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8
a reply to: Ophiuchus1

…..”Mogul Project Officer Albert Trakowski:
"I remember so clearly when the contractor for these targets was
selected, and Jack thought it was the biggest joke in the world that they had to go to a toy manufacturer to make these radar targets. Then it was even a bigger joke when it turned out that because of wartime scarcities of materials, the tape that they used to assemble these targets, the reflecting material on the balsa
frames, was some kind of a pinkish purple tape with a heart and flower design on it."…..

(Note: By now in the interview Linda, for association sakes to the Marcels and there use of the word Hieroglyphics….she uses it herself…..for the remaining portions of the interview Q&A…..also Linda’s interview is mostly based on The Roswell Incident which she had read prior to interviewing the Marcels. A goal of hers was to get Jesse to talk other related Roswell points not divulged in The Roswell Incident book)

About the debris “material”…..

Reading the exchange below…….I’m going to hypothesize the material was a type of thin “porous canvas fabric” with some type of reflective coating applied to it……if I were to believe that the Mogul flights included the testing of different types of materials….in the research of the project. I suppose no matter how hard you sledgehammer fabric material, and if on a flat surface….you won’t break it. I can also see, trying to crumple coated canvas fabric material and it returning back to its flatness….imo.

Read carefully and completely and close attention to Linda’s personal side comments…..also “business” is not literal in a sense, since it’s only mentioned in the context of running a military office.





He deny’s it being a balloon literally……and I believe that to be true ….but that to me means the balloon envelope portion itself. Whereas, the material he found ….imo….was more than likely from the payload train detached from the balloon envelope portion itself, and strewn over the flat landscape.

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