Socorro & the UFO symbol - 1964-2014

My old friend Ray Stanford circulated this communication today:

Ever since the death of the principal Socorro witness, Lonnie Zamora, after which I could then (without embarrassing Lonnie) tell of his agreement with Captain Richard T. Holder to substitute a fake red 'insignia' for what he actually saw, I have been accused by certain internet loudmouths of anything from being an outright liar trying for unexplained reasons to conceal what Zamora actually saw, to being totally deluded either by my own mind or by unnamed covert operatives out to deceive me and the world. But, if one looks closely as their statements and totally baseless claims, it should not surprise any intelligent, objective person that unfounded speculation and even paranoia is rampant among some internet persons pretending to make UFO-related revelations without due research, while using the internet as a playground.

You learned in my mass-mailed letter of yesterday, that Captain Holder's son was often told by his father that he obtained Zamora's agreement to not divulge the real 'insignia' he saw in red on the observed vehicle, so a bogus one was substituted.

My purpose today is NOT to tell you that I know exactly what Zamora really saw in red on the side of the ellipsoidal object he saw. I cannot accomplish that simply because I don't know for sure exactly what he saw in red on the object's side.  So let me be clear what my purpose is. I intend to simply show that the alleged red 'insignia' Zamora began describing only after his talk with Captain Richard T. Holder on the evening of Friday, April 24, 1964, that is, , was NOT what he really saw, but is the substitution he decided to describe after talking with Captain Holder.

As to how the red 'insignia' Zamora actually saw might have looked, David Rudiak's totally objective and honest search for the reality contrasts beautifully against the internet 'rif-raf-rattle' of those who had rather publish unfounded speculation instead of doing due research on this matter.  

There was even one internet-published speculation that I made up the story of the inverted V with three lines beneath it . Ignorant people can be awfully ridiculous at times. 

Rather that rewrite all I have written years ago about that matter, let me provide you the assemblage of facts David Rudiak very kindly sent me recently, with the links he  provided attached.

He very accurately reported:

The inverted V with three bars through it was being reported in the media before Ray even got to Socorro four days later and finally questioned Zamora (as I recall) on day 5.  So despite some nonsense on the Net, Ray certainly did NOT invent that insignia, somehow getting Zamora to change his story.  Examples of the media mentioning the symbol in the days immediately following:

1.  Zamora interviewed by Walter Shrode on KSRC, I think the day after the incident.  Transcript at my website and link to recording:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Socorro/Socorro_Zamora_interview.html

SHRODE: And someone said that the markings that you saw was an upside down “V” with three lines running through it.

ZAMORA:  No sir, I couldn’t tell you that, because they still don’t want me to say nothing about the markings.

2. Walter Shrode interviewing Hynek had him saying it (maybe April 29, after Hynek arrived at about the same time as Ray the evening of April 28), my transcript and link to recording:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Socorro/Socorro_Hynek_interview.html

SHRODE:  Well, about this marking, can you tell us how he described this marking and what the marking was?

HYNEK:  Yes, I see no reason why not.  He described it to me as an inverted “V” with a sort of a bar across it...

3.  AP quoted Hynek saying it:

AP Story, April 30 (e.g. Frederick MD News)

“The scientist [Hynek] also discussed the markings that Zamora said he saw on the side of the object, a red, inverted V with bars through it.”

4.  First responder and Zamora's friend Sgt. Sam Chavez was quoted saying it:

Hobbs NM Daily News, April 28, front page

“State Police Sgt. Sam Chavez said he was told by Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora that the UFO he saw Friday… had red markings on its silvery side. Chavez said Zamora told him the design was an inverted V with three bars crossing it, but that the Air Force had told him not to discuss the markings.”

5.  AP attributed the description directly to Zamora himself:

AP Story, April 29 (e.g., San Antonio TX Light, Danville VA Bee)

“Officer Lonnie Zamora said the object he saw last Friday was a brilliant white. He said there was a red marking on it like an upside down V with three lines across the top, through the middle and at the bottom.” (San Antonio paper also showed a drawing of the object with the symbol, said to be based on "newspaper accounts")

6.  Ray has a recording of Socorro police dispatcher Mike Martinez saying it.  As Ray notes in his book:  "Martinez quoted Zamora in Spanish, "...un 'V' invertido, con tres líneas debajo," meaning exactly what it says, "an inverted 'V' with three lines beneath it"

In fact, I haven't been able to find a similar description of what became known as the real symbol in this early reporting.  That seems to have appeared later.
Thank you Dave Rudiak.

In the National Archive's files on the Socorro case, one sees contradictory drawings of the red 'insignia' Zamora allegedly saw, but there may be several rational explanations for those, including the fact that at least two of them look as though they conceivably might have been drawing experiments made by  Captain Holder and/or Zamora. That might have been done either with Zamora just trying, by drawing it, to figure out what he saw in those rushed  moments of observation, or maybe drawings made when he and Holder were trying to decide on the substitute 'insignia' Zamora would, thereafter, publicly claim he saw.  It seems conceivable that Holder mistakenly left them in the report, and that slip-up might have been induced by the long interview that went on into the night.

As you will see below, when movie producer James Fox and I were at the National Archive on August 3, 2013, just as James had  predicted in coaxing me to go back to the Archive with him for a second day, I made a discovery that thrilled me and filled me with great satisfaction, because the document basically confirms what I had been saying for fifty years, and it should show any realistic person that the  Zamora began  (on the April 25, 1964) drawing (in any of its slight variations) and telling the media and independent investigators he saw, was a bogus substitute instead of what he really observed.

Look below: James Fox asked to take that photo of me holding an important Hynek letter I had just discovered in the Archive's Socorro files, because he wanted to record for posterity the satisfaction on my face, that was a obvious as it could be.  I've set into James' photo, below, another document found in the Archive's Socorro files. It's Allen Hynek's Polaroid photo (and its enlargement, at upper-left) of me standing beside the SW Socorro object landing pad imprint.  Lonnie Zamora is at left, and N.M. State Police Sergeant Samuel Chavez, stands between Lonnie and me at age 25 on the morning of Wednesday, April 29, 1964. Thankfully,  Hynek, who had known me since 1959 insisted -- over Sergeant Chavez's objections --  that the Socorro police dispatcher Mike Martinez tell me I would be welcome to join them at the landing site during Hynek's on-site investigation. (See my Socorro book for details, pages 49 - 63.)

Proudly, the 'slide' below illustrates my fifty years and early involvement in the Socorro case. THANK YOU, James Fox, for the wonderful opportunity that the situation be photo documented in my 50th year on the case.

PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE WRITTEN TEXT IN EACH IMAGE THAT FOLLOWS.

O.K., now that you've seen in James fox's photo of my unconcealed satisfaction, look closer at the letter I uncovered, as shown below.   You can now understand my satisfaction, because it contains, in Allen Hynek's hand-written letter (while he was enjoying a badly needed vacation) to Major Hector Quintanilla at the United States Air Force's Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson AFB, Hynek's own drawing of the 'insignia' Lonnie Zamora reported

Was there a stamp thief at the National Archive or at the Air Force's FTD? ;o) We noticed immediately that the postage stamp Hynek had affixed had been cut out.:

The second page of Hynek's letter to the FTD contains only trivia, and is unrelated to the Socorro case, so although it's available on request, I don't want to cause this letter to be rejected by some systems because of large data content..

A closer look at Hynek's drawing of the 'insignia' he reports Zamora saw is included in the slide below, with its color changed to the red in which Zamora said he saw the 'insignia'. What you see as the background of that red enlargement is  the advertisement which Hynek enclosed with his letter to FTD, for a very new company seeking employees, that used a logo somewhat resembling what Zamora had described. Notice, too, that their logo was black and NOT RED. The FTD was hoping to find a company on earth that might have created the Socorro vehicle, but as major Hector Quintanilla told the CIA later, they never did.

Please notice what I tell in the blue area of the slide about that company's status.:

The USAF tried so desperately to locate a research facility that they hoped would explain what Zamora (and the other witnesses) saw, that they convened a highly classified conference at Holloman AFB, trying to find some terrestrial source for the high-performance object Zamora had seen within about 35 feet, with his glasses still ON, but they could find no source for the vehicle, and FTD's Major Hector Quintanilla told the CIA that despite all efforts, it was unexplained and unidentified. A copy of a declassified document concerning the secret Holloman meeting is in my files, from the National Archive visit with James Fox.

In closing, let me stress that I'm not trying to present the exact shape of the red 'insignia' Zamora saw on the side of the object. If you read my book, you know that all the persons to whom I spoke (including several law officers) told me the same thing, describing . And I have no doubt that the persons who told me that were actually told that  before Lonnie had his interview with Captain Holder.

Well, Hynek drew the following for the Foreign Technology division:  We plainly see that it is also an inverted V with three lines, but with some change in their lengths and placement. So whether Hynek's version was more accurate, or what first-arrivers at the landing site who talked to Zamora before he talked with Captain Holder said Zamora told them (and in at least one case drew) is more accurate, we can reasonably deduce that whatever the little variations might have been, it was the inverted V with three lines that Zamora saw and absolutely NOT the Zamora described to all media persons and other investigators after his agreement with Holder to provide a substitute 'insignia'.

My point here, again, is simply that, for example, the  Richard Hall of NICAP insisted on publishing for NICAP and asserted was what Zamora saw (despite my protests as their only on-site investigator) absolutely was NOT what he saw.  it's only what he and Captain Holder agreed he would tell people after their meeting on the night of Friday, April 24, 1964.

I don't know whether Zamora saw this , or this , or even if it was perhaps some variation from either of those as, if I understand him correctly, Richard T. Holder, Jr. feels he recalls his dad showing him. However,  as the only on-site-with-Hynek, Zamora, and Chavez investigator of the Socorro case, and the only living person who has studied the case in-depth for fifty years, and as the one who wrote the 211-page 1976 book of the case, I strongly recommend that the 'UFO community' realize the  was purposeful fiction, and that the red 'insignia' was actually some version of an inverted V with three lines.

There is more on the Socorro case which I hope to be sharing, and an important part of it is a video James Fox says will be in his forthcoming UFO movie, showing Hynek admitting to me something very significant about the Socorro case.  And, by the way, if what Hynek tells me (in the interview) that the U.S. Air Force told him is true, it proves that a certain guy's pretense that the Socorro event was a student hoax is utter bilge (foolish or worthless claim).

The central proponent of the silly idea that the Socorro, multi-witness case was the result of a student hoax, has made numerous flimsy excuses for not debating me or others about his Nth-degree fictional extrapolation from one man's closed-minded fantasy about the case. Well,  I've heard enough of his fiction which misrepresents a highly observant and intelligent man, Lonnie Zamora, as a blundering fool. Such misrepresentation of Lonnie Zamora are disgusting to anyone who really knew him, to his wife and children, and such claims are indefensible.

I CHALLENGE THE PRIMARY PROPONENT OF THE CLAIM THAT THE SOCORRO EVENT WAS TO RESULT OF A STUDENT HOAX TO DEBATE ME.

But, once again the primary proponent of that foolishness will surely not dare debate me, and likely (if he's still behaving as in the past) will hurl insulting excuses at me, as he did when I challenged him to debate me on Coast-to-Coast, and he chickened out.

I'm sick and tired of anyone trying to misrepresent the quiet but,  intelligent, and highly observant Lonnie Zamora as some stupid, unobservant fool.

Well, back to my main purpose of this letter. Now you have Hynek's hitherto unpublished letter confirming the inverted V with three lines. I hope future illustrators will not show the fictional, substituted 'insignia' on the object's side when the Socorro object is illustrated. It was only because 'researchers' everywhere, including NICAP,  had by 1976 convinced the public that the fictional 'insignia' was the real one, that, at my Socorro book editor's virtual insistence, we used the fictional 'insignia' on the side of the object on page 25 of the Socorro book.  He said that, otherwise, people under the influence of organizations like NICAP and APRO would come across the book and reject it, saying that the author didn't even know what was really seen on the object.  ;) For that reason, I wrote Appendix A: An Obfuscated Red "Insignia"?, pages 206 - 211, in the Socorro book's original Blueapple Books edition.

Now, fifty years after the Socorro event, I am happy to be able to set the record straight, yesterday with Richard T. Holder's important revelation, and, today, with J. Allen Hynek's letter to his employer, the Foreign Technology Division of the U.S. Air Force.

Still at it, after fifty years investigating what actually happened at Socorro on April 24, 1964,

Ray Stanford 

(Note: in the original mail out Ray had included inserts of the symbols within the text, but theses didn't come out here, but I think things are clear enough particularly if you pay attention to Ray's slides. Well done Ray - great anniversary present)

Ray Stanford's book on the case originally appeared as "Socorro Saucer in a pentagon pantry" and later in paperback as "Socorro Saucer" - well worth reading.