“Mr., uh-Helman, was it?”
“Heller.”
“I’ll let you take a few notes, and you can use my name, too. This won’t take long.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The Air Force said that thing was just an air balloon. That first press release … three hours later, they said it was a mistake.”
“Well, uh, Sheriff, mistake or not, there was quite a fuss-you had to field phone calls from all around the world, I understand.”
He nodded again. “I sat up all night, taking calls from Germany, London, France, Italy, all kinds of places, and probably every state of the Union. I told ’em what I’m telling you: talk to the Air Force.”
“That what you’re advising me?”
“No.” His tone was firm but not unkind. “My advice to you would be, move on to the next flying saucer story on your list.”
“Why is that?”
He nodded toward the notepad in my hands. “Now I am going to insist you put that thing away.”
“All right.”
“Don’t quote me. Don’t paraphrase me.”
“Certainly.”
Wilcox sat forward and placed both his hands on the desk; his tone shifted to a flatly ominous one that would have seemed ridiculous if it hadn’t been chilling. He said, simply, “Don’t look into this or you’re going to have real trouble.”
“Trouble from you, Sheriff?”
“Not from me.”
“Who from?”
“That’s all I have to say, on or off the record. Do yourself a favor, son-move on.”
“But, Sheriff, my understanding is that you saw some of this strange debris, even handled some of it. Was this stuff really as weird as has been reported? Thin metal that goes back to its original shape, if you wad it up? Unearthly hieroglyphics?”
Wilcox stood, slowly, smiling as benignly as a Buddha. “I appreciate your courtesy, Mr. Heller, stopping by to let me know about your inquiry.”
There’s a stage out of town at noon; be on it.
I sighed, stood, sticking my pad in my back pocket, nodding to him. “Thank you for your time, Sheriff.”
On the way out, the chatty deputy called to me, “Mr. Heller! Where are you staying, should we need to get in touch with you?”
I went over to his desk. “I’m at the El Capitan Hotel.”
“Over the drugstore downtown,” Deputy Reynolds said, nodding, writing it down. “Thank you, Mr. Heller.”
Then he extended his hand and I shook it, and felt a piece of paper there. His bright eyes narrowed and communicated something, and when I withdrew my hand, I tightened it over the note he’d passed me.
I didn’t look at it until I was out of the courthouse and onto the street: “Clover Cafe, two p.m.”
But right now it was barely ten, so I headed for the next stop on the list Major Marcel had provided Pearson; with the exception of the sheriff, everyone else was either expecting me or at least a chum of Marcel’s, and should be a friendly witness.
On the third floor of the Roswell equivalent of a skyscraper-a four-story brick building on Main Street-down on the left of a wood-and-pebbled-glass hallway, black stenciled letters on the door announced the HAUT INSURANCE AGENCY. I knocked, and a flat, midrange voice called, “Come on in!”
It was a single office, not very wide, and not very long, either, barely big enough for the ceiling fan that was lazily whirling, like a propeller warming up; no receptionist-no room for one. By an open window looking out on Main Street, at a work-piled rolltop desk, a boyishly handsome blue-eyed blond young man-maybe twenty-six, in shirtsleeves and a red-and-blue tie and blue slacks-was on the phone, talking life insurance with a client.
He waved me toward the hardwood chair alongside his desk and I sat, removing my straw fedora. The blond kid smiled at me, motioned that this call wouldn’t take long. It didn’t.
“Walter Haut,” he said affably, without standing, extending his hand, which I took and shook. “And you are?”
“Nathan Heller,” I said. “I believe Jesse Marcel warned you I’d be stopping by.”
“Oh, oh, yeah-sure! Glad to see ya. But, uh … you mind if I check your i.d. first?”
“Not at all.” I showed him the Illinois license and the honorary deputy’s badge.
His grin was affable and embarrassed. “You’ll have to excuse the less than lavish digs … I’m just getting in the insurance game … independent agent. I was in your field till about two months ago.”
“Investigation?”
He rolled his eyes. “Collection agency. I don’t know how you guys stand it.”
“My firm doesn’t do repo or skip tracing. Ugly work.”
“I agree.” He leaned an arm on his desk, leaned forward. “You know, I like people-I’m a member of the chamber of commerce-and the last way I want to make my living is doggin’ folks for a dollar. So … let’s make it ‘Nate’ and ‘Walt’ and skip the formalities. Any friend of Jesse’s is a friend of mine.”
“I don’t want to overstate my case, Walt. I’ve only spoken to Jesse once. But my feeling is he’s pretty bitter about taking the fall for Uncle Sam.”
Haut’s head bobbed up and down. “He got a bum shake, all right. Which is why I’m willing to talk … off the record, of course-confidential source, that kind of thing?”
“You got it. Mind if take notes?”
“Feel better if you would. Only thing … if my phone rings, I have to take it … one-man agency, you know how it is.”
“Actually, I do. I spent almost ten years that way, myself. When did you leave the service, Walt?”
“I left last August. I never intended to make a career of it. Were you in the service, Nate?”
I nodded. “Marines.”
“Overseas duty?”
“Guadalcanal.”
He blew an appreciative whistle. “Then you can understand how good civilian life looks to a guy who flew thirty-eight combat missions against the Japs.”
“Not a pilot, I take it.”
“Bombardier and navigator.”
Pen poised over the pad, I said, “Your postwar position out at the air base, I understand, was public relations officer?”
Haut leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, elbows winging. “Yeah, it was a pretty uneventful ride-except that Tuesday after the Fourth, in ’47. You gotta understand my job was kind of a funny mix-there was a lot we kept the lid on. Very tight security out at that base-keep in mind, you’re talking to the guy who dropped glass-gauged instruments smack dab into the Bikini explosion, and yet even I couldn’t get near aircraft with atomic bomb configuration.”
“Tightly run operation.”
He nodded vigorously. “Secure areas fenced off, MPs on twenty-four-hour guard-not only do you need a pass to get on that base, you need a further pass to even get near those aircraft.”
“Understandable.”
Haut sat forward again. “At the same time, for all of that, we wanted to foster good relations with the local community. Colonel Blanchard’s first duty out of West Point was same as mine, a public relations officer. So he had a real thing for building good feelings between the town and the base. Anything we were doing that was newsworthy, I was to let the two newspapers and two radio stations in on it. We let ’em come out and take pictures, whenever and whatever they wanted-long as they didn’t try to snap pictures of the B-29s.”
On the morning of July 8, 1947, Haut told me, he’d been called into the base commander’s office. Colonel Blanchard dictated a statement to his public information officer for immediate release to the local press acknowledging the 509th Bomb Group being “fortunate enough to gain possession” of a downed flying saucer (I had read the clipping in the file Pearson gave me).
“Around ten-thirty that morning,” Haut said, “I drove to town and made the rounds, dropping off the release at the radio stations, KGFL and KSWS, then over at the Roswell DailyRecord and Roswell Morning Dispatch. The Record’s an
evening paper, and they’re the ones that had the headline story, that night-I just barely beat their deadline.” He shrugged. “Then I had lunch.”
“You didn’t think anything of it? Another day, another captured flying saucer?”
“Hey, it was lunchtime, so I ate lunch. I didn’t give it a second thought; when a superior officer said, ‘This is what it is,’ that was what it was. I went back to the base, to my office, and nothing much happened the rest of the afternoon, except the phone was ringing pretty heavily for a couple hours, there.”
“The press?”
“Oh, yeah, from all over the world!” Haut laughed, shaking his head, struck by a funny memory. “First call I got was from London, this very proper English accent asking me how the ‘chap’ who found the saucer had known how to fly the ‘craft’ back to the base! I had to explain it was just wreckage that was found.”
“Walt, you and I both know how cautious, and secretive, the military usually is. Here’s the first instance of the Air Force capturing a flying saucer … obviously, an event with national security implications, and international repercussions. Do you think Colonel Blanchard could have issued that press release on his own authority?”
Haut rocked in the chair, thought about that. “Well, the Old Man could put out just about anything he wanted, short of information about the atomic weapons on the base. Things of a secret nature, that’d have to be cleared with the Eighth Air Force, and probably further up the chain of command….”
“Don’t you think a flying saucer would fall into that category?”
The insurance agent sighed, nodded, mulling some more. “Come to think of it … I honestly don’t think Colonel Blanchard did authorize that release. My feeling is it went to General Ramey and probably on to higher headquarters.”
“Why would they sanction something this sensitive?”
An eyebrow lifted. “I can hazard an informed guess, if you like.”
“Guess away, Walt.”
Haut sat way forward, eyes narrowing. “That same afternoon, remember, word from General Ramey came down that the wreckage wasn’t from a flying saucer at all. And all of a sudden, we’re sending out pictures of Jesse Marcel holding up fragments of your everyday garden-variety weather balloon, looking like Public Idiot Number One.”
I was shaking my head, confused. “Why would the brass do that? Issue a statement about a flying saucer, then a couple hours later contradict themselves?”
Haut’s smile turned sly. “I believe they knew the cat was out of the bag … the rumors about a recovered saucer were flyin’, around here. So the best cover-up is to announce a saucer’s been found, attributing it to Major Screwup, then have the much smarter, more knowledgeable general say, ‘Oh no, you children got it wrong-it’s just a weather balloon.’ And the incident gets laughed off and forgotten. It was a real sleight-of-hand trick, typical disinformation.”
“Disinformation?”
“That’s an intelligence term, Nate-same as ‘black’ propaganda, purposeful misinformation issued by the government to confuse its citizens. And as a guy who put his ass on the line for his country, that ticks me off. I mean, America’s supposed to be in the truth business.”
“You believe a saucer was found.”
The boyish features tightened. “I believe Jesse Marcel knows a weather balloon when he sees it. And did you hear about that weird tinfoil shit?”
“Yes. Did you see any of it?”
“No. I saw nothing-no wreckage, no outer space creatures, none of it. A public relations officer is kept away from things that the public isn’t supposed to know; that’s a practice I was accustomed to.”
“But you believe Jesse Marcel.”
“We were friends. My wife and I would go play bridge with the Marcels; we rode to work together. He was rock-steady, and hell, they kept him on as intelligence officer for something like a year after that. Then he was transferred to a job of even higher responsibility!”
“You mentioned ‘outer space creatures’…”
Haut raised a hand. “You need to talk to Glenn Dennis about that.”
“I have.”
“Well, Glenn’s a friend, too, and I can tell you, he’s not a nut; if he tells you something, you can give it credence. Now, I don’t know much about this military clampdown that supposedly went on, and nobody threatened me or anything-but you might want to talk to Frank Joyce, over at the radio station.”
Which was my next stop, an adobe storefront operation with a small neon reading radio station, in small letters, over KGFL in large ones, above a sun-faded canvas awning. In a small control booth, I talked with Joyce, a sturdily stocky brown-haired kid in his mid-twenties, who ran a one-man operation on his afternoon show, reading the news, spinning records, doing live commercials and serving as his own engineer. I sat at the little table used for on-air interviews and we chatted sporadically, while discs spun-not flying ones, the kind with Crosby and Perry Como on them.
Joyce had Mickey Rooney-ish features clustered in the midst of his round face, making his rather large head seem even larger; he might have been young, but he had the no-nonsense attitude and manner of a seasoned reporter.
Doing twelve things at once on his control panel, he said, in his announcer’s mellifluous voice, “Late morning, Monday after the Fourth, I was making my usual calls, before the noon news, looking for any late-breaking items…. When I checked with Sheriff Wilcox, he put this rancher, Mac Brazel, on. Never met the man, and wasn’t sure I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“Well, this bizarre wreckage he described made me pretty skeptical; flying saucer talk, I mean, really! Little green men, that sort of thing. I asked him to put the sheriff back on, and recommended they call the RAAF, since they were the experts on everything that flies.”
“Did you put the story on the radio?”
“No. This was Monday; that story didn’t break till Tuesday.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, having been in the military, I knew they’d frown on something like this getting out-assuming there was anything to it. We’re just a little station, and we were just starting out, then-we didn’t need to alienate the local air base. Funny thing is, my pal Walt Haut was the p.r. officer out there, and I’d been giving him a hard time about putting me last on his list, whenever a story broke. Guess what story he brings to me, first, to make it up to me?”
“And that’s when you put it on the radio.”
“Yeah, but the funny thing is, I was still reluctant. I mean, I find myself readin’ this press release about the Air Force saying it has a flying saucer, and I say to Walter, ‘Wait a minute! I know this story-I sent this guy Brazel to you!’ And Walt says, ‘Oh, well, thanks,’ and I say, ‘I don’t think you oughta release this story.’ Like I said, I know how the military works, and I could see the top brass havin’ a shit fit. But Walt says, ‘It’s okay, Frank, the Old Man has cleared it, and it’s okay for you to put the story on the air.’”
Since it was close to airtime, Joyce had flown out the door to reach the Western Union office, two blocks away, to wire the release to the United Press in Santa Fe, knowing he had hold of a “once-in-a-life-time” story.
“You’re the one that spread the news, then,” I said.
Joyce nodded, getting the next disc ready on his second turn-table, cuing it up in earphones that left one side uncovered, so we could converse. “By the time I got back here, the phones were going crazy, AP, UP, every big and little paper in the Southwest, hot for confirmation and more details.” His mouth tightened under the mustache. “Then I got the first of the threatening calls.”
“Who from?”
“A Colonel Johnson, in Washington. He cursed me out, told me I was going to get in a lot of trouble, and I told him I was a civilian and a member of the press, and he couldn’t treat me that way, couldn’t tell me what stories I could put on the air. And he says, ‘I’ll show you what I can do,’ and hung up.”
This made a kin
d of skewed sense. If Walter Haut was right, the point of the exercise had been to release the flying saucer story locally-where rumors were rife-and then quell it a few hours later with an official retraction and the new “weather balloon” explanation. Having the story spread over the wire, nationwide and worldwide, focusing instant and intense attention on Roswell and its purported flying saucer, may have been more than the brass bargained for.
“A day or so later,” Joyce said, a new platter spinning, a Peggy Lee, “two soldiers escorted that rancher Mac Brazel into this very station. They sat him down in that chair you’re sitting in and he offered to do an interview. I said, ‘Fine, but you boys’ll have to wait outside,’ and the soldiers, they waited out on the street, by the jeep they brought him in.”
“And you interviewed him.”
“Yes, but I didn’t bother putting it on the air. How could I? The story he told this time was completely at odds with what he first said.”
“He backed up the military’s weather balloon tale.”
“In spades. Now Brazel said that what he found on his ranch was rubber strips, tinfoil, paper, Scotch tape and sticks. Like a big kite had crashed. No writing on it, either. All the debris could be tied up in a little bundle weighing less than five pounds, he said. And he told the same story at a press conference for the AP, among others.”
“Did you get a sense of why he lied? You figure he was threatened, too, and caved in?”
“Well, there are two schools of thought on that. One is based on the fact that ol’ Mac somehow came into a considerable amount of money-a fella so poor he couldn’t rub two nickels together suddenly shows up in town in a brand-new pickup. Then he buys his family a new house, at Tularosa, and a cold store at Las Cruces….”
“That sounds like the Chicago school of thought,” I said. “What’s the other one?”
“Money may have been part of it, but this is one of your old Wild West, dirt-in-the-pores cowboys, and I could see his quiet anger, how coldly p.o.’ed he was. He’d been bullied, pushed around and threatened.”
“Is this something you surmised, or …?”
“I had a moment with Brazel here in my ugly little announcer’s cabin, and I said to him, ‘You know that this story doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what you told me on the phone, the other day.’ And he says, ‘Look, son-best keep that to yourself. They told me to come here and tell you this story, or else.’ ‘Or else what?’ I ask. ‘I open my mouth, I’m in the federal calaboose. Or breathin’ sand.’”
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