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Your Paracast Newsletter -- March 17, 2012


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
March 17, 2012

UFO Pioneer Kenneth Arnold Profiled on The Paracast

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Sunday, March 18, 2012: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.

Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.

Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present long-time UFO researcher Curt Sutherly, author of "UFO Mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth," who talks about about an almost-forgotten UFO pioneer, Kenneth Arnold, whose spectacular sighting of nine objects on June 24, 1947 began the popular UFO era. Curt has researched not only Arnold's life, but his involvement in the controversial Maury Island UFO case. Also please check out Curt's guest column in this issue.

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet

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The Incredible Incident at Maury Island
By Curt Sutherly

During the summer of 1947, the city of Tacoma, Washington was the scene of an outrageous and ultimately tragic drama involving duplicitous characters, covert high jinks, and UFOs. The players in the drama—now known as the Maury Island Mystery—were many. By the time it ended, two Army investigators were dead and a container of alleged UFO fragments lost.

Caught in the middle of this drama was Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho businessman best remembered as the aviator who spotted nine mysterious objects flying at incredible speed over the Cascade Mountains. An official report of his sighting to the Army Air Force ushered in the “modern era” of UFO research and famously resulted in the phrase “flying saucer.”

The events that make up the Tacoma mystery were originally chronicled in The Coming of the Saucers, a 1952 literary collaboration between Arnold and magazine editor Ray Palmer. What follows is a compressed account based on numerous sources, including my interview with Arnold in June 1977.

June 24, 1947: Aloft in his single-engine CallAir airplane, Arnold observes an echelon formation of highly unusual aircraft sweeping though the peaks ahead of him. An expert pilot with thousands of flying hours logged, he estimates the speed of the objects at somewhere between 1,200 and 1,600 miles per hour—a speed impossible in that day and age. He later describes the motion of the objects as like "speedboats on rough water" or "like a saucer...if you skipped it across water." The sighting ignites a media storm; Arnold becomes famous, and the term “flying saucers” enters our popular culture.

On July 4, 1947, the pilot of a United Air DC-3, Captain Emil (E. J.) Smith, and co-pilot Ralph E. Stevens, spot two formations of nine objects total—one of five and one of four—shortly after departing the Boise, Idaho airport en route to Seattle. On July 5, Arnold meets Smith and Stevens in a newspaper office in Seattle, where they examine a UFO photo taken by a member of the U.S. Coast Guard. Arnold and Smith hit it off immediately. On July 8, the Army Air Force announces the recovery of a crashed flying disc near Roswell, New Mexico. The Army quickly recants the story.

On July 29, Arnold flies to Tacoma to investigate a “flying disc” report. He does so at the behest of controversial editor/publisher Ray Palmer, who has received a letter from one Fred Lee Crisman, who identifies himself as a Tacoma harbor patrol officer. Crisman claims that he and another patrolman, Harold Dahl, observed discs over Maury Island (today a peninsula), about three miles north of Tacoma Harbor in Puget Sound. Crisman further claims that one of the discs appeared to be in mechanical distress and dropped fragments onto the island. Palmer asks Arnold to investigate, all expenses paid.

Shortly after being contacted by Palmer, Arnold is visited by Lieutenant Frank Brown and Captain William Davidson, representatives of A-2 Military Intelligence of the Fourth (Army) Air Force. Assigned the task of investigating the flying saucer phenomenon, they take their job seriously. At the end of the visit, the officers leave a phone number so Arnold can contact them.

On the evening of July 29, Arnold lands at Berry Field, a small airstrip outside Tacoma. He tries to make room reservations via the airfield's telephone, but discovers that every hotel is booked. Finally, he telephones the Winthrop Hotel, the largest and most expensive in the city—and discovers that a room has already been reserved in his name. Only two people know Arnold is in Tacoma: his wife, Doris, and Ray Palmer. Neither reserved the room.

The following day, Arnold contacts Harold Dahl, identified in Palmer’s letter, and invites him to the hotel for an interview. Dahl is reluctant but finally agrees and arrives the same evening. He tells a strange story of “tons” of metallic slag falling onto his boat and onto Maury Island from a donut-shaped flying disc surrounded by other discs. He says that, afterward, a mysterious stranger wearing a black suit and driving a 1947 Buick invites him to a café where he outlines the entire sequence of events experienced by Dahl on the boat.

Arnold next interviews Crisman, Dahl’s alleged superior. (The two are not harbor patrol officers but operators of a salvage boat, Arnold eventually learns.) Crisman claims he too observed a flying disc while retrieving slag samples from the island.

Distrustful of Crisman and beginning to feel out of his depth, Arnold telephones E. J. Smith, the DC-3 pilot. He asks for help and Smith agrees. Arnold flies to Seattle to rendezvous with his friend. From then on, events grow even stranger.

Every conversation in Arnold's room is leaked to city newsmen. The pilots learn of the leak from Ted Morillo, a United Press reporter, who says a mystery informant is phoning in the conversations verbatim. Smith and Arnold tear the hotel room apart looking for eavesdropping devices, but find nothing.

The next morning, August 1, Crisman and Dahl visit Arnold in his hotel room. They bring samples of the material they say came from Maury Island. Arnold later describes the material as slag-like, though some pieces possessed unusual properties, such as being very dark and very heavy, as if the material was extremely dense.

By now uneasy to the point of panic, Arnold decides to telephone the two Army investigators. Lieutenant Brown takes Arnold’s call but acts as if his own phone is bugged; he refuses to talk until he can call back from a pay phone. When he does call back, Brown tells Arnold that he and Davidson will fly to Tacoma the same day. When Dahl learns of the impending arrival of the Army investigators, he flees the hotel. Meanwhile, Crisman and Smith go off for a “private” discussion. This is the second time Smith and Crisman have gone off together. On the previous afternoon, Crisman drove Smith to Seattle ostensibly so the pilot could collect his car.

When the two Army officers arrive, they listen to Crisman's recollection of both his and Dahl's alleged sightings and suddenly decide they need to leave. They take with them slag samples given to them by Crisman. That same night their aircraft crashes, killing both officers. The flight chief and one other person aboard parachute to safety. Why the two A-2 investigators failed to parachute to safety remains unexplained.

On the morning of August 2, the story of the crashed transport appears in headlines in the Tacoma Times. The story reveals the names of the two officers even before the military officially identifies them. The story is by staff writer Paul Lance, who says his source was an anonymous caller.

On August 4, Smith makes a phone call and departs the hotel for an hour, returning with a Major Sander, who identifies himself as a member of A-2 Intelligence from McChord Field. Sander insists on collecting all of the slag fragments left in the room by Crisman. Later he drives Arnold and Smith to a smelting company where he points out material that is similar to the fragments provided by Dahl and Crisman. By now highly suspicious, Arnold believes the smelting material is only superficially akin to the fragments that Sander confiscated in the hotel.

Two weeks after the Times story about the crash, reporter Paul Lance dies. Although in apparent good health, he reportedly succumbs of meningitis.

Ted Morillo, the United Press reporter, loses his job and suffers numerous personal setbacks. Efforts on his part to trace the mystery caller are unsuccessful.

Crisman disappears and is rumored (by an anonymous caller) to have boarded a military aircraft bound for Alaska. Dahl is found sitting in a movie theater, and Arnold later reports that he seemed completely unconcerned about the deaths of the two Army officers.

Arnold himself nearly suffers a fate similar to that of the two Army officers. En route home, he stops for fuel at a small airfield. On takeoff, the engine stalls and only quick reflexes save him from a fatal crash. Somehow, the plane’s fuel switch was turned off while in flight, something that no experienced pilot, such as Arnold, could possibly do by accident.

So what really happened over Puget Sound? Did Dahl and Crisman see flying discs or was their story an elaborate—and deadly—hoax?

Amid rumors of sabotage and espionage in connection with the crash of the military transport, the FBI initiated a field investigation that included interviews with the various Tacoma players. The result was a fifteen-page report compiled by Seattle special agent Jack B. Wilcox. The report was dated August 18, 1947.

During an interview with Dahl and Crisman on August 7, at the bureau office in Tacoma, Wilcox found the two to be vague and evasive in response to questions. He said both men initially "denied making any statement to anyone" suggesting that the slag samples came from a flying disc. It was apparent, he continued, that the two men "were not telling their complete and true connection with the flying disc story…”

Faced with a lengthy interrogation, Crisman and Dahl finally told Wilcox that, in communicating with Ray Palmer, they manufactured a portion of the flying disc story only because it appeared that "that's what he [Palmer] wanted them to say."

On the matter of the crashed military transport (a B-25 bomber), the FBI checked with Fourth Army Air Force investigators at McChord Field. The bureau was told that an Army investigation uncovered no hint of sabotage linked to the crash. The cause of the crash was reportedly traced to a faulty exhaust stack that sparked a fire on the left wing, shearing away the wing and tearing off the aircraft tail.

Murkier was the identity of the anonymous caller who, among other things, tipped reporters to the identities of Brown and Davidson even before the Army had released the names of the two men. Five anonymous calls were made to various newspaper offices between 11:30 A.M. on July 31 and 5:30 P.M. on August 2, 1947. The FBI clearly suspected Crisman of being responsible or complicit in some way, although they had no proof.

The curious actions of Smith, who on at least two occasions went off alone with Crisman and who brought in the mysterious Major Sander, bring a degree of suspicion on him as well.

The "fragments" from Maury Island are another matter entirely. Bureau investigators obtained samples and decided they bore a "distinct resemblance" to slag from a smelter near Tacoma—presumably the same smelter Arnold and Smith visited with Sander. Whether the FBI samples were part of the original material provided by Crisman or obtained elsewhere remains unknown.

A few additional notes: Crisman never went to Alaska despite rumors to that effect. Instead, he reportedly served in the war in Korea and later became a public school teacher. He eventually adopted the identity of Jon Gold, a radio talk show host in Tacoma. In 1968, he was summoned to New Orleans by District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was conducting an inquiry into the John Kennedy assassination. Crisman was tenuously linked to the assassination through photos taken at the time in Dallas—one of which showed a man who looked like Crisman.

Crisman died of natural causes in 1975, leaving UFO researchers and conspiracy theorists to puzzle over his murky past. Many felt he had ties to the intelligence community, particularly the CIA.

Crisman's cohort, Harold Dahl, moved to a different address soon after the incident. Around the same time, Dahl’s son ran away and eventually turned up in Montana.

Publisher Ray Palmer, duped by Crisman into pursuing the Maury Island story, later left Fate magazine, of which he was co-founder, and started his own publishing company in a small farming community in Wisconsin. Over the years, he produced such magazines as Flying Saucers and Search. The latter was essentially a knockoff of Fate. He died in 1977, at the age of 67, after a series of strokes.

Kenneth Arnold lived on for many active years before his death on January 16, 1984, in a hospital in Bellevue, Washington. The 50th anniversary of his sighting passed on June 24, 1997 with minimal fanfare.

Adapted from his publisher’s biography: Curt Sutherly is a professional journalist who has studied and written about unexplained phenomena for over 30 years. His writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. An active interest in wildlife and natural history, combined with his background as an Air Force sergeant and his investigations of the paranormal, have given Curt a unique perspective in his ongoing studies. A native of Pennsylvania, Curt is currently a federal civil servant for the Department of Air Force.

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