29 April 1965
Dr. Donald Menzel
Mrs. Lyle Boyd
Harvard College Observatory
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts
Dear Don and Lyle:
At long last I am prepared to make a reply to your letter of February 19.
I am also enclosing a piece of the identical type of cardboard originally picked up by me at the landing site. The only difference between this cardboard and the one that picked up and turned into the Air Force is that the original piece had charred edges which may or may not have had any connection with the alleged landing. But that it was charred I will attest to. This sort of cardboard gets caught under many of the bushes in that area. As you know the winds there can get very high in the windy season and you not only see tumbleweeds batting across the county, but papers, old lunch boxes, packing crates, etc. also merrily batting along. These get wedged in under the bushes and stay there to weather sometimes for a year or more, I would judge. This cardboard, as you can see, has plainly been weathered quite some time and is hardly the kind that would have been used to fake a model of a spaceship.
I should mention that I discussed this whole matter with Major Quintanilla, and he and I are in agreement on what follows...
I don't think we can say too much about the flame which could be pretty subjective. A swirl of dust, etc. might from the distance have been interpreted as a flame. As far as smoke or a burning bush, etc., I couldn't get anyone to say this time that they had seen smoke or that anything was burning. Chavez insisted only on the fact that a greasewood bush appeared to be charred in spots or rather seared and that the searing was highly localized. Greasewood is notoriously hard to ignite, and a match or ordinary flame held to it hardly affects it. Chavez said that the burns appeared as though intense but localized flames had seared the grass and the bushes, but remarked that right next to a seared portion he found portions quite untouched. Again, I don't know how much credence can be placed on all the burning bush, etc. I think we must go to other major points.
The hoax hypothesis is, of course, one that suggests itself immediately. It is Quintanilla's and my opinion that both Chavez and FBI agent Byrnes must have been in on the hoax if we adopt the hoax hypothesis. They testified that there were not tracks in the immediate neighborhood and so that the hoaxsters must themselves have arrived and left by balloon! Had it been a hoax, certainly some paraphernalia should have been left around if the pranksters beat a hasty retreat. These gentlemen said that nothing of that short [sic] was found.
The wind was blowing strongly from the south, yet the object was reported to have gone on directly west. This would hardly fit a balloon, unless, or course, the directions are wrong. I questioned and requestioned the people on this point and couldn't shake them from that.
Pranksters could have hidden behind the knoll directly to the south, particularly had they lain prone. The dynamite shack is too small and too far away to have risked hiding behind it.
Opal Grinder does have a high school student working for him, and I talked with him at length. Teenagers generally hate Zamora's guts, but it was added that they hate all "fuzz" and that if they wanted to get even with Zamora, they would simply beat him up or do something more direct, like letting the air out of his tires or something with immediate results rather than resort to an involved hoax. Opal Grinder, of course, would have to be in on the hoax, also. He again told me the story of the tourist who said that he had sighted a strange object crossing directly in front of him on the road and landing in the gully, and toward which an instant or so later, he saw a police car going. I checked out the time on that, and it fits. Opal Grinder's wife was just preparing to go to the bank before it closed at six (apparently she takes the week's loot to the bank on Friday's just before they close). The sighting as you know, was supposedly at 5:45 P.M.
Some of the high school students do have walkies-talkies, but the hoax hypothesis does involve Chavez, Opal Grinder, and FBI agent Byrnes; the reported tourist would have to be mythical.
Zamora knew exactly where the dynamite shack was, because this is precisely why he left the road when he heard the noise. He though there had been an explosion in the dynamite shack.
The dynamite shack does not stand on legs as I have inspected it closely and have taken photographs. The shack and the reported UFO must be considered distinct.
Furthermore, I doubt very much whether a hoax could have been kept secret this long. If a hoax comes off well, perpetrators like to gloat abit, and there would have been no point about getting even with Zamora if they couldn't have gotten some kudos out of it. La Paz once told me of an instance in which some college students wanted to get even with a geology professor so they planted a "meteorite" and contrived and explosion at some distant part of the state, and had this poor professor running around ragged chasing a meteorite. The perpetrators, however, were caught and expelled from school because they simply couldn't keep their secret. They "confided" to friends who in turn confided to others, and there you are.
But waiving all that aside, the things that would seem to militate against a hoax are the fact that no tracks coming to or going from the region were found, minutes after the sighting occurred; paraphernalia was <ins>not</ins> located, again within minutes; Chavez and the FBI agent would have to have been in on the hoax; and finally, the object took off crosswind. Paraphernalia I refer to would have been ropes, launching equipment, gas tanks, etc. which would have been difficult to dispose of in a few minutes and certainly without making any tracks. You say "the whole thing could have easily been planned to come off as it did." I think otherwise; it would have been quite difficult to have a thing like this come off, even as to the original timing. Zamora did not have a regular patrol route so his approximate whereabouts would not be known at a given time. I questioned Chavez on this, and Zamora patrols the whole town in an unscheduled fashion. By the way, there is no local UFO club. The fake UFO would have had to have been rather sizeable since I looked to Zamora line an overturned car, upended, first off from a considerable distance.
You suggest that when Zamora's car crested the hill, the hoaxsters triggered another blast of flame and released the UFO, and ran like hell. The terrain is such that when a car crests the hill, it suddenly comes upon the site. There simply would not have been time to wait until this happened to release the UFO and then hide; not unless there were elaborate ropes and wires running over some distance on the ground. As long as Zamora wears his glasses, his eyesight is good, and you must remember that he did not lose the glasses until after he saw the flame and thought the object was about to explode.
Your suggestion that we re-enact the event is more difficult than you think. I have not yet discovered how to make a balloon go off crosswind or to wait to release it and cause an explosion until someone was just one hundred feet away from me, and then disappear and hide "instantaneously." If the purported balloon release had been by means of delay mechanism, with the hoaxsters having had time to hide, then the release mechanism or some parts of it would have been left behind as tell-tale evidence.
Zamora is having his troubles; the boys he picks up are rather direct. Zamora stopped a teenage speeder, and the kid fired back at Zamora, "What are you giving me a ticket for? Don't you know a flying saucer might come down on you any minute?" You may say that this strengthens the hoax hypothesis, but on the other hand it is a perfectly natural remark for kids to make to a man held up to ridicule for having "seen things."
I come back also to the trenchant fact that Zamora was a thoroughly scared person. Chavez has remarked this to me a number of times that never in his long association with Zamora has he seen him in anything at all approaching the state he was in when Chavez joined him. I honestly don't think a small gas-filled balloon carrying a cardboard spaceship could have frightened a gruff, practical type like Zamora who is used to accidents, bloodshed, fights, and even murders. We all seem to agree that Zamora saw something that really and truly frightened him.
It seems much more likely to me that he saw a strange test craft which is super secret. The flaws in this reasoning are that if it is so super secret why would anyone be landing a half mile south of a town. Why, also, have we been unable to unearth from various agencies any classified clues as to such goings-on?...
Coming back to the Socorro case: I'm sorry that I could have been of any more help. Both Quintanilla and I find it impossible to dismiss as a hoax unless we have some evidence that there was a hoax...
Maybe we should take a look at it in slow motion . . . a speed you can keep up with. 
