Brig. Gen. Thomas Jefferson Dubose and the Weather Balloon Cover Story Gen. Dubose was the highest ranking Air Force officer with direct knowledge of the Roswell case who went on record about the weather balloon cover-up plus other important details about what was really happening in Gen. Roger Ramey's inner circle. (New, 2012! Dubose's alleged off-the-record comments about Roswell being an alien crash with bodies recovered!) However, he was relegated to the role of a complete nonentity in the 1995 Air Force Roswell report, even though he was Gen. Ramey's Chief of Staff in July 1947 and had a great deal to say about what happened in recorded interviews and in his affidavit. Despite his pariah status in the report, the Air Force history Web page lists him among their founding generals, and you can read his Air Force biography here. (Wikipedia bio) Main pageGen. Wesley ClarkBrig. Gen. Thomas DuboseBrig. Gen. Arthur Exon Steven LovekinLt. Gen. Roger RameyGen. Hoyt Vandenberg The Air Force didn't even identify Dubose in the photos taken July 8, 1947, which they reproduced in their report, picturing him with Gen. Ramey. In the 1000+ page Air Force tome, I found his name mentioned only once by the AF in an interview with somebody else. (See below for the rather lame explanation for ignoring Dubose by the head author of the report in a recent interview.) Why the cold shoulder from the Air Force for this high-ranking officer? Quite simply because Dubose's statements contradicted the Air Force's party line. He stated that there was indeed a cover-up ordered from Washington (he said he personally took the phone call from Gen. McMullen) and that the weather balloon debris shown in the photos was not what was found at Roswell. It was instead a cover story designed to get the press off their backs and "put out the fire." Dubose insisted that even he never saw the actual Roswell debris (meaning that what was pictured in the photos was not the actual material recovered near Roswell). As Dubose stated plainly in his affidavit, "The material shown in the photographs taken in Maj. Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press." In some interviews Dubose also spoke of an earlier, highly secret shipment of debris ordered by Gen. Clements McMullen (Deputy Commander of the Strategic Air Command) in Washington, to be sent by "colonel courier." This was after Dubose had been first informed of the recovery of debris by Roswell base. Dubose was handling the high-level phone traffic while Ramey and base commander Col. Hewlett Wheless were away from the base, attending an air show in nearby Denton, Texas, as reported in local newspapers. According to Dubose, this debris traveled from Roswell to Fort Worth and was transferred to another plane, with the acting Fort Worth base commander, Col. Alvin Clark, assuming the role as the new courier (thus the "colonel courier"), obviously attesting to the importance attached to this shipment. This was then flown to Washington. Dubose added that Gen. McMullen would also inform him the debris was subsequently shipped on McMullen's personal plane to the aeronautical labs at Wright Field for further analysis . (The story of this debris shipment is mentioned in Dubose's affidavit, but confused with the other events of July 8. In other interviews Dubose made it clear that this shipment took place several days before when he was first made aware of the discovery at Roswell.) New, Jan. 2012! In a recent 2009 interview with Col. Richard Weaver (ret.), the chief AF counterintelligence debunker for the 1994 Roswell report, Weaver was asked why they ignored Dubose's testimony, such as his affidavit statement that the weather balloon photographed in Ramey's office was a cover story to divert the attention of the press. Weaver again totally ignored the totality of Dubose's various statements (more immediately below), instead tried to sidestep the question with a lot of propagandistic doubletalk (a subject he taught for AF counterintelligence), claiming the one affidavit statement meant nothing because Dubose didn't specify what they were trying to cover up. Weaver also stated that they never claimed in their report that the weather balloon in Ramey's office was definitely what was recovered at Roswell, just that it was "consistent" with what others said was recovered (ignoring or misquoting-- examples--many others who said otherwise), nor did they claim it came definitively from a Project Mogul balloon. (These were simply flagrant lies by Weaver, unless one wants to argue these weren't definitive claims in their report but "very strong insinuations.") Here are some more sample Dubose quotes from various interviews describing the balloon cover story and the highly secret shipment of debris, making it quite clear Weaver was again being disingenuous when it came to Dubose and the significance of his testimony: "There was a host of people descending on our headquarters seeking information from Ramey, badgering him for information we didn't have. I didn't know what it was. Blanchard [base commander at Roswell] didn't know. Ramey didn't know... We didnt know what the hell it was. Nobody knew. But I can tell you this it damn sure wasnt a weather balloon. ...McMullen said, Look, why don't you come up with something, anything you can use to get the press off our back? So we came up with this weather balloon story, which I thought was a hell of a good idea. Somebody got one and we ran it up a couple of hundred feet and dropped it to make it look like it crashed, and that's what we used... Now I imagine, privately, some people felt bad about doing things that way. But it worked. The story stuck." (Interview with reporter Billy Cox (blog) , Florida Today, 11/24/91, requoted in Timothy *Good, Beyond Top Secret, p. 465 ) "Actually, it was a cover story, the balloon part of it... Somebody cooked up the idea as a cover story ...we'll use this weather balloon. ...We were told this is the story that is to be given to the press, and that is it, and anything else, forget it. ...And McMullen, if you ever knew him, ...if he told you he wanted to run something, he goddamn sure ran it. He knew every facet of the operation. He's a busybody. He wanted to know what the hell was going on, who was pissing on the sidewalk, and all that sort of thing. "McMullen told me, You are not to discuss this... this is more than top secret... its beyond that. Its within my priority as deputy to [Gen.] George Kenney, and he in turn responsible to the President, this is the highest priority you can exhibit. And you will say nothing. And that's the end of it. ...Jesus, that's the commander and chief and you forgot about it." (Audio, directly below; quoted in Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt, UFO Crash at : (From affidavit) "I received a phone call from Maj. Gen. Clements McMullen, Deputy Commander, Strategic Air Command. He asked what we knew about the object which had been recovered outside Roswell... I called Col. William Blanchard... and directed him to send the material in a sealed container to me at Fort Worth. After the plane from Roswell arrived with the material, I asked the Base Commander, Col. Al Clark, to take possession of the material and to personally transport it in a B-26 to... McMullen in Washington, D.C. ...McMullen told me he would send the material by personal courier on his plane to ...Wright Field. The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy." (According to recent 2022 research by Anthony Bragalia and military author/historian John Schlund, McMullen's involvement with Roswell probably didn't end there. In December 1947, McMullen personally transferred his son, Cpt. Frank McMullen, from Japan and assigned him to Roswell. Bragalia speculates that McMullen, well trained in intelligence, wanted a trusted "inside- man" or spy to keep him informed about what base personnel might be saying about the incident months later. Schlund, an expert on McMullen, only expressed the opinion that if the matter was classified, Gen. McMullen would have done what was necessary to contain it.) Dubose's story of this shipment is briefly alluded to in the Air Force Roswell report in their Attachment 32. (Caution: long download) But instead they attribute it to "crashed disc proponents" instead of one of their own generals. The omission of Dubose's name and the deliberate distortion of the actual source is a very clear illustration of the propaganda techniques employed by the Air Force counterintelligence people who wrote this report. New! Audio of Gen. Dubose describing the weather balloon cover story, order to cover up from Gen. McMullen, "beyond top secret" security imposed by McMullen, and the matter going clear up to the President. The Roswell Cover-Up: Brig Gen ThomaThe Roswell Cover-Up: Brig Gen Thoma...... New! YouTube, from documentary on Roswell. Same Dubose testimony, but in video form. Nor did they stop at this. They also erroneously claimed that the shipment was supposedly ordered by Gen. Ramey. Dubose, however, repeatedly stated that the shipment was ordered by Gen. McMullen. McMullen further instructed him to not even tell Ramey about it. (Ramey was away from the base at the time.) They omitted Dubose's statements that everything was carried out under the strictest secrecy and the matter even went directly to the White House. They also tried to spin the story to the effect that if there were such a shipment, then the purpose was to have the debris identified by the top weather people in Washington. Omitted was the rest of Dubose's story of the debris subsequently being shipped on McMullen's personal plane to Wright Field for further This was obviously the most mysterious weather balloon in human history! But in reality, news stories of the day had both Ramey and Dubose instantly identifying the supposed debris as a weather balloon. Dubose knew all about radar targets. He went on to become Air Force chief of air rescue. Corner reflector radar targets were already being used in WWII for sea rescues. As Dubose was quoted as saying during the photo shoot in Ramey's office on July 8, 1947: "Colonel Dubose declared that tinfoil objects of the type used on the kite were employed in Europe during bombing missions to throw off German radar. The tinfoil causes huge "blips" on a radar screen, he added. The same device also was used on life rafts in the Pacific to facilitate air-sea rescue work." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, July 9, 1947) Ramey also brought in a weather officer, Irving Newton, for official identification. Newton, of course, also instantly identified it as a weather balloon (photo), and the press release then went out that the Roswell "flying disc" had been positively identified by a weather officer as an Army meteorological device. Newton and Dubose both remembered Ramey then stating in front of reporters that the special flight to Wright Field was no longer needed. Contemporary news story also state that the special flight had been canceled. But later that evening the story changed again. Now Ramey was again shipping the so-called weather balloon to Wright Field for still further identification. (See, e.g., ABC News radio broadcast) One wonders how many times and how many experts were needed to certify this debris as coming from a weather device! What was really going on is perhaps hinted at in the FBI telegram about the event from their Dallas office. The FBI had also been told by one of Ramey's intelligence officers that the recovered device resembled a high-altitude weather balloon with its attached radar target. But then the telegram goes on to say that further telephone conversations with Wright Field "had not borne out that belief." (This part of the FBI telegram contradicting the AF's modern balloon explanation was also omitted by the AF propagandists in their summary statement.) What was so different about this weather balloon that it deserved special treatment? The Air Force claimed that further identification was necessary because this was really from a Project Mogul balloon. But the early Mogul balloons used off-the-shelf weather balloons and radar targets that were indistinguishable from standard meteorological equipment. Furthermore, the FBI telegram, Gen. Ramey's statements, and those of the meteorological officer, Irving Newton, all identified the debris as coming from a singular weather balloon and radar target. (I personally spoke with Newton on the phone, and he reiterated that all he saw was a standard meteorological balloon.) The photos taken in Fort Worth also clearly show very little debris, compatible with a singular weather balloon/radar target, but not with a multi-balloon, multi-target Mogul. (I have reconstructed the radar target debris from these photos in a 3-D ray tracer, which again scientifically confirms that it came from one, not multiple targets.) The fact is, there was nothing on public display that could distinguish the debris from a ordinary weather balloon/radar target. Furthermore, when Ramey went on a Fort Worth radio station that evening, he denied that there was any instrumentation found, though he noted the weather balloons normally carried such instrumentation (various United Press stories). If the debris couldn't be distinguished from a typical weather balloon/radar target combination, then how does one explain the statement in the FBI telegram that Wright Field after telephone conversations did not concur with the balloon/radar target identification? One possible explanation is the previous shipment of debris to Wright Field described by Gen. Dubose. If one assumes Wright Field had examined this earlier shipment and determined the debris was from something else, this would explain why they would later disagree with the weather balloon identification. Dubose's earlier shipment of crash debris may be alluded to in the Ramey message at the end of the first paragraph in the phrase "...the victims of the wreck you forwarded to the ?????? at Fort Worth, Tex." One possible interpretation of "...the wreck you forwarded..." would be the wreckage Dubose says was previously forwarded to Fort Worth and hence to Washington and Wright Field. If there was such a shipment a few days earlier, then it was likely on July 6 when rancher Mack Brazel came to Roswell to report the wreckage, and according to the Sheriff's family, brought samples along with him. Besides Dubose independently corroborating Roswell intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel's story of a weather balloon cover-up, Dubose's subsequent actions also lend to Marcel's credibility. Dubose recommended Marcel for promotion to Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserve several months later, along with Roswell base commander Col. Blanchard. Dubose also co-signed Blanchard's highly laudatory evaluation of Marcel the following spring and recommended Marcel attend Air Command and Staff School. (click here to view document) Similarly Gen. Ramey a few months later wrote that he thought Marcel command officer material. (click here to view document) If Dubose (or Ramey) had any doubts about Marcel's competency following the encounter in Ramey's office, it isn't evident in Marcel's record. In another interview (below), Dubose indicates he felt Marcel was "set up" to take the fall for the debunked flying disc story, and maybe Dubose was trying to make it up to Marcel. A new twist in the Dubose story emerged in 2006-2007 with the release of Roswell public information officer Walter Haut's "deathbed" affidavit and a videotaped interview from 2000. In them, Haut stated that both Dubose and General Ramey had flown to Roswell base to attend the general staff meeting on the morning of July 8 (thus about 10 hours before the action shifted over to Ramey and his weather balloon story in Fort Worth that afternoon). There briefings were given about the crashed saucer and recovered crew and a discussion was held on how to publicly handle the situation. Ramey stated that it was to be covered up. Thus Haut's affidavit and interview would indicate that Dubose was well aware of the crash of a flying saucer and the recovery of alien bodies. If that was the case, then Dubose knew much more than he would publicly disclose. However, Dubose did hint that he knew more. Stanton Friedman, who was the first to find and interview Dubose, indicates that Dubose would tell him to keep going, that he was following the right track (i.e., flying saucer crash), without being fully explicit about what he meant. Even if one discounts Haut's revelations, there is no doubt that Dubose's testimony was explicit about the high secrecy and the coverup surrounding Roswell that had nothing to do with a balloon crash. Further, it involved something far stranger than balloon debris that required a special and very secret shipment of debris to Washington and then to Wright Field. More recent Dubose revelations by NASA's Clark McClelland --Roswell was an alien crash (New, 2012!) Recently an interview with Dubose by Clark McClelland has come to light that would seem to corroborate Haut's affidavit that Dubose knew a lot more than what he publicly let on. McClelland started his diverse career with NASA in 1958 at Cape Canaveral (now Cape Kennedy) and later moved to the Kennedy Space Center in Houston, ending his career in 1992 after McClelland says NASA fired him as punishment for breaking security on a UFO incident he personally observed (see below). His many jobs at NASA included Shuttle ground test pilot and in mission control. He informed me he was personally involved in launching or observing 679 missions during his career and into the present. McClelland has recently written (stargatechronicles.com) having interviewed Dubose in 1990 in Dubose's Florida home. In this off-the-record interview (Dubose wouldn't allow McClelland to record it), reconstructed from notes and memory, McClelland claims Dubose went far further in his story, admitting that Roswell was indeed a crashed alien spacecraft recovery, including 4-5 small dead bodies and one live one. (The story of a surviving alien pops up in several other accounts as well. See testimony in support of Roswell mortician Glenn Dennis' story.) McClelland depicts Dubose's language as profane (as it was in some other interviews), particularly so when he mentioned his disgust with the cover-up (even telling McClelland he might put out a public statement telling the real story--something he never did) and how he, as a senior officer, was not allowed to actually see the crash material or bodies because of all the security. It particularly riled him that captured Nazi scientists, people he hated and had fought against, were allowed to see the crash site but he was completely frozen out. This jibes with other interviews where Dubose said he was never allowed to see the real debris, with his boss, Gen. Roger Ramey, strictly enforcing orders from above to keep Dubose away from it. Again Dubose confirms that the weather balloon depicted in the photos was a cover story, deliberately flown in (he said he was also responsible for this), whereas the real debris all went to Wright Field, Ohio. This does not necessarily conflict with Roswell intelligence officer Jesse Marcel's story, who said the plane