Word: colonel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That is most likely the description Major Marcel used when he returned to the airfield. As Walter Haut, who was then the 509th's press officer, tells it, he was ordered by Colonel William Blanchard, the group commander, to issue a press release. Haut, now 75 (he and his wife have license plates that read MR UFO and MRS UFO), remembers Blanchard's saying, "We have in our possession a flying saucer. This thing crashed north of Roswell, and we've shipped it all to General Ramey, 8th Air Force at Fort Worth...
Stung by the publicity, the Air Force reacted defensively. It promptly began a six-month investigation of its own, and released its report the following July. The Air Force investigators, under Colonel Richard Weaver, interviewed the surviving firsthand witnesses to the debris recovery, searched records and followed leads that brought them to Charles Moore, a scientist who in 1947 was working on the then top-secret Project Mogul...
Because his father had known Colonel Blanchard of the 509th Bomb Command, Jeffrey was able to wangle an invitation to the 1996 reunion of the 509th. There he met pilots stationed at Roswell in 1947, most of whom, he found, had "heard nothing about the supposed crashed-saucer incident until years later, after all the publicity started." After chasing down other sources suggested by 509th pilots, Jeffrey was convinced. "In essence," he says, "the 1947 Roswell case has turned out to be a red herring, diverting time and resources away from research into the real UFO phenomenon...
...last week splitting legal hairs to show why Ralston's transgression wasn't as severe as Flinn's. Whereas Flinn, the Air Force's first female B-52 pilot, lied about her affair and disobeyed an order to stop seeing her boyfriend, Ralston had his fling when the then colonel and his first wife were separated. Because Ralston and his love, a married CIA employee, were attending the Pentagon's National War College at the time, he had no troops under his command. Cohen reasoned that Ralston didn't hurt "good order and discipline" and consequently didn't warrant punishment...
...civilianized (only 20% of its members fly planes) and feminized (26% of its new recruits are women) of the services, and its generals are notoriously sensitive lest their troops become indistinguishable from those of, say, a civilian corporation--and equally unfit to fight a real war. An Air Force colonel who served in the Persian Gulf and Somalia apprehensively contemplates the worst: "If each member is worrying about whether the officer next to him is getting special treatment because she is sleeping with the commander, you won't be prepared for the enemy. Or worse, you'll commit mistakes...