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Master Sergeant Lewis Rickett 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Interviewed by Mark Rodeghier

January 1990

{Unintelligible words are shown by *. Words that seem inappropriate in the context are shown in parentheses. Punctuation and spelling is the transcriber’s “best guess.” Minor

interruptions by Rodeghier have been omitted. R is Rickett, MR is Rodeghier.} 10

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Mrs. Rickett: But I understand, maybe his health or something, he just seemed to be more or less don’t want to MR: He doesn’t want to say much Mrs. Rickett: That’s what I mean MR: And he’s friendly, Don says, on the phone, I mean, he’s not impolite, you know, but he…was he always a nice guy? Mrs. Rickett: Always. Always down to earth and we stopped in, it was in someplace down in California, some years ago. And we stopped by and see him and we had dinner with him. That’s the last time I have seen him, it’s been about 25 or 30 years. MR: It’s a long time Mrs. Rickett: Well, they only had but one, two children. One I think. And now those boys are grown, I understand. MR: Is his son Joe, I think? Mrs. Rickett: The oldest one’s Joe. MR: Joe, right. Because Joe would like his father to talk about what happened. Mrs. Rickett: Yes, I think that’s what your friend said, Don MR: Yes, that’s what Don said. Joe would like him to talk, but Joe doesn’t know if he could convince him. Mrs. Rickett: Then something else, and I’m going, not cut in on this. The man, you know, the man who came on, Marcel? MR: Yes. Major Marcel.

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Mrs. Rickett: (laughing) MR: Jesse, huh? Mrs. Rickett: OK, well, we knew them too. MR: Yes, you knew everybody there. That’s amazing, it’s really, just to make sure, I really, I really enjoy being here. First, for what * Mrs. Rickett: (discussion about temperature in room, then she leaves) R: * was a first class jerk. MR: I guess, he sounds like it. He sure does. R: I had, if I could have found out, I turned that on, just for a minute, I could have found his address, the day he left outside of the service, and I know why he got bounced out, I told * that MR: You would have written to him, or R: He laughed, he said, I figured you found out, how did you find out? I said, you ought to know better than to ask a question like that. I knew everybody that MR: (interrupting) You’d been there so long R: started out with OSI, started out in counter intelligence, and we all, or most of us, in the same bunch and we graduate, over and over, and you know, you spend nine weeks with a bunch of guys. We broke a record at Holabird when we went through CIC school, see. They didn’t think we could do that. MR: Well, that’s interesting. Let me tell you what I’d like to talk about…go ahead R: Just remembering, I can talk to you about what I can remember. When I’m at a spot, I don’t know how I got here, out here, I wasn’t over here, and I was over here, and since this all come up about I kinda *. I knew Sheridan Cavitt. We’ve eaten together, we’ve had parties together, I was there, I was with them the day that their first child was born, * Cavitt then, was a captain at that time, and, I think he retired, he went into OSI headquarters in Washington, so, the higher up the ladder you get, the tighter it gets. * Them boys are a little bit afraid of that you see, * it’s declassified now, and what I know, I just don’t want to be quoted by name. MR: We’ll never quote you by name.

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R: * It isn’t that anybody, I doubt if there’s, I know one guy that was out there. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. And, his name was Jack Williams.

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MR: Jack Williams, yeah R: I don’t, I’ve never heard from Jack since then, and *. When we went up to Alaska, I ran into two of the nicest Majors, that you would ever run into, in the district up in there. But you would never know that then. They didn’t want anybody to know that way. One was a pilot, and used his rank MR: Only when he had to? R: When he was flying, see. But * nice guy, don’t get me wrong. But I just don’t allow him * It seemed like he ran into a jerk. He’s always in a high position where he can lower the boom on you, see, and MR: There are a lot of jerks in civilian life, too R: We covered our back pretty well. Every now and then, we could, * was the happiest person in the world the day I retired, see. My oldest brother died after I put my orders in. In, March? And he’s in * Pennsylvania, was. I couldn’t get away to see him. And another brother, that was in Salinas, Kansas, at that time B-29, he was a pilot MR: He was a pilot? R: * . And he since died of a heart attack. MR: Were you the youngest, or? R: No, I had, the one that died, the pilot, was younger than I am. He and I ran, he was a fighter pilot during World War II. And I had a number of years in Europe during the war. And, so then the, another one, they all had heart attacks, every one of them. But that one went to the funeral. But, that one, the * , when she got up in the morning, see, and he got married, and he told her, his wife says, as long as you act like Mac you’ll be all right. (laughter) OK, let’s MR: That’s fine, I enjoy hearing that because it’s really nice to meet you and the kids R: We’ve enjoyed it. They had another guy that used to come by here one time MR: Stan Friedman? R: yeah MR: A little older fellow with a beard, and

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MR: Yeah, he’s a different kind of character R: You’re with a research MR: The same that Don is. The Center for UFO Studies. R: Oh, yeah MR: Which Don, I don’t know if you ever heard of Doctor Hynek from Northwestern University. He’s the fellow who started, he was the consultant to the Air Force on UFOs back then. So, yeah, I wanted to come down because first of all, I’m going on to Orlando, after I get done here. I work for a software company. And I’ve got to do some training there for them this week. And I’m also at the University of Illinois in the Sociology Department. So, when Don and I, we’ve talked a lot, he told me what he learned from you when he came down here a few months ago. We’ve done some more interviews since then, and so there’s some things I’d like to ask you that Don didn’t, and I then I’d just like to ask some of the same things to get whatever. But we’ll just sit back and relax and talk. I’m interested in when you first got involved with OSI, and what were you doing in the war, and what were you doing at Roswell, and so forth. When did you first join OSI? R: Well, I came back from overseas, and I think in 1945, and I was in the Air Inspector’s office, there at Bolling Field. And I had been around Bolling for a long time, off and on, I knew a lot of the people, and a friend of mine, he was at that time, at least I thought he had been, he was on the Park Police in Washington, by the name of Joe Wirth. I l think I talked to your friend and mentioned his name. And one day he, casually, he says, you done some nice work over in Europe, and he says, cause we, I was in an air disarmament outfit, after the war was over, over there. And we picked up different things that Wright Patterson wanted, the Air Force wanted, and we made sure we checked in, that’s where we started in. So he says, we need a few more people in the outfit that I am in now. I said, why, I thought you were in this Air Force, Army Air Corps. He says, counterintelligence is looking for people with mechanical ability, and the others that goes with it. And he said, we just wondered if you would mind talking to me about it, and if you would be interested. And I said, well, we’ll talk it, but I don’t know. I simply don’t know. How much travel you’re talking about, and where would you work and how, those things, and. I says, if in the event I decided I might like, then you would have a problem on ;;your hands, because I came back from overseas and re-enlisted, and tried to get into Bolling, and the only way I could get into Bolling was General Huffy (sp ?) needed somebody with a 513 MOS. Which is line chief and air inspection. He says, and Colonel Van Sladen (sp ?) needed it. And that’s how I got a, had a shot. So I says, you might have a problem getting me. He says, well, we might talk about it. So, we talked back and forth, and Joe’s wife and my wife, and each other, and so I said, well, it sounds good. I says, I was talking to Colonel Sladen today and he says, well, that was a pretty nice field, he says, you need people, and he says, and I think you’ll do well in there. Your

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assistant can hold down until we find somebody. And, so he says that, and then I talked to him and we went on over to the Pentagon and talked to the people over there. And, so I wound up switching, transferring to counter intelligence. Providing I could, they were starting a new class over at Holabird, the Army was, on counter intelligence, and provided I could get through the course. And he said, of course, we known you’ve been cleared, your clearance is no problem,

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MR: You were already cleared R: I was already cleared. And of course, if you made it over there your clearance would have to, the further you get into the course, it’s nine weeks, and about half way through that course if they see you’re doing all right, they pick up your clearance and upgrade it. So, I said all right. So we went over, I said all right. So, there was thirty seven, thirty five Air Force People scattered around the United States, that went in. Five Army people. And at Holabird they had a General that always, a General Kaiser (sp ?), that always talked to the first group, and the graduating group. So, he says, well, he says I wanted to congratulate everybody on joining, trying to get into it, but I’ll tell you now I’ve got some bad news for you. He says, we’re tight over here. This is a tight school. This nine weeks will be the hardest weeks you ever spent. He says, I’m sorry to say, our experience has taught us that only about fifty percent of you people out there right now are going to make it. There were about five other, there were four other classes besides ours all at the same time. Straight Army, but this one was, but he says now, we have a group of 35 Army Air Corps. And the rest of the classes is pure Army. He says, and we’ve never had an Air Force group before, never have. So, he says, this would be something for me to find out, he says, if they’re any smarter than you other guys are. So, he says, we’ll find out. But he says, anyhow, I will meet you here nine weeks from today, about this same time of day. And he says, and I’m pretty sure from past experience that only about half of you are going to be here. Well that was one of the hardest nine weeks. You had four classes, four in the morning, you had eight classes. You had to get up, lived in the barracks, you had to get up, and be in line and march down to school. And each class was fifty minutes long, had a ten minute break, and you had a half mile to walk. And you had to be over there, in your seat, and you had to march in formation, you had to keep cadence, because they had what they called bird dogs. * what were, timing you. And, so then, five days a week, and then you had to MR: Was there homework? R:: Oh yeah, homework, oh yeah. And every Friday, you would be given a test on every, on all that week. The second week you’ll have a test on Friday, all that week and some of the first week. And the further you go, you can rest assured that on the last test you get, you will have a question or two about what you learned the first week. He says, so you have to remember that. And every other week, you have a full formal written, you start having on how to write reports, and every other week you would turn in a report. Stating what you learned and what you did during the week. And what you do, you wind up with comments on what you considered was the hardest points and what was the easiest points. And one, I think on the third week, we, boy it was hard. So, I think the

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third week we started an observation on crime scenes. They take you down into Baltimore, a hardware was there at, Baltimore, and take you up in front of the hardware store, which they had already set up, they had about three hundred items in the window, you walk up and look in that window, you had one minute, and you turned around and walked back. And you go back and write down any items that was in there, and where were they in the window. And, my God, and we’d do that about two or three times a week. The first time I think some of us got fifteen, twenty items. And some of them just one or two. And some of them got maybe twenty, twenty five. We had three officers in the bunch, and they weren’t any better than we were. Everybody compared notes. By the end, of the eighth week, and any time you’d go back to another place, or the guy would rearrange his window. On the eighth week we went back, and eighty to eighty five per cent of us picked up over two hundred and fifty items in that window and put them in that window where they were. After we were taught how to do it. And, they teach you. Don’t look at any one item, just look at the window, and then you go back and sit down and visualize it.

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MR: Visualize ? R: Yeah, he says, make your eyes do the work of a camera. They would take you into a crime scene in a room, like this. We walk in the door, and stop. And you had thirty seconds, to walk through the room, turn around, and that- a- way. Thirty seconds, go back, draw a floor plan with the floor, walls and ceiling, put the furniture and everything, whatever that was there, there. MR: You’d have to put it in there R: And that took * you should put it down now, that’s off the ceiling, floor, and like that. So, anyhow, and then they had the, we were doing, all the time, in the meantime, in courtroom procedure and all, we were doing a spy case, a Soviet spy case, it was a famous case, during the war. So, we had actors doing the parts of the different spies and all like that. And we were taking notes and like that, and we had to write a report and like this, and somebody, I don’t know how the tip got out that if you had it typed, and it looked neat, they wouldn’t really MR: They wouldn’t look close? R: Not too close, see. They’d just grade * (telephone bell rings) that’s the doctor. We never did get penalized, for marching, because this guy Jack Williams had gone to military school, high school and all that, he could make perfect cadence, he was a good right guy. So we had, we had one tall Master Sergeant that was a pretty good group leader, see, the officers one of them felt, * division picked him. Later we found out why. This guy was better than they thought they were. Anyhow, enough of that. Anyhow, when they passed out diplomas, that nine weeks was up, MR: Right ? General came back?

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R: Everybody come back, and the old General was in the auditorium, he got up and he said, well what I said nine weeks ago that half of you would be gone, and half of you have gone, and he says, somebody walked over to him and said something, and he says, yeah, he said, I made a bad mistake. He says, but I think I said what I said nine weeks ago, he says, I want the Air Force bunch back there to stand up.

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MR: Are you going to go? Mrs. Rickett: Yeah, I was supposed to go in there and look at this. If you get it before it gets too bad, I don’t have to go to the hospital. R: Are you going? Mrs. Rickett: Right this minute (she leaves) R: So, he said, I want you * birds, to look at a class. Now, he said, they had thirty five men to start with. Five Army men. There’s only three or four of them standing out there. No Army. The only person in it, that’s not here, contracted * TB. And he’s in the hospital, critical. MR: So everybody else made it ? R: All thirty four. And he says, and for the rest of you people for something to shoot at, he says, we don’t think and we never did think that this would happen, as a class grade, every man in it made better than a 98. And he says, now that’s almost impossible. He says, and some of you, I understand that one English high school teacher down from North Carolina is a purist and our English professor, Captain so and so over there, is not a purist, so they disagreed on a form that he was writing, and he says, and they’re both right. I read his, and I like it better than I did his. He says, I think his makes better sense, in the * form, than this guy’s. But he says, anyhow, he says, no one made less than 98, and he says, some of them made 99, and that guy there made 99, almost 100, he says, you hold your hand up, * like that, and he says, the rest of you guys, that just goes to show you why the Army Air Corps is considered *. So any how, I come on back, and by this time I’m in the 700th CIC at Andrews, and come on back, and they taught me how to run undercover, and all those things, and I got back to Andrews, and so we got a call MR: Was this the Fall of 1945, when was this? R: Forty six. I got back in forty five. Our youngest one was born in August. And this was real, real early MR: Early in forty six R: Real early in forty seven MR: Well, how long would you be gone? (spoken to Mrs. Rickett)

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Mrs. Rickett: Oh, it’s hard to tell. You know how they are. Just long enough to get your payment up front, I guess. (irrelevant talk between Mrs. Rickett, Rodeghier and Lewis Rickett) R: No, it was real, I know that she was born in 1946 in August. In the winter. She was born down at Bolling Field. And this was real early, first, first part of forty seven. Yeah, first part of forty seven. MR: So, you were at Andrews R: I was at Andrews. Joe Wirth was with the 700th CIC, and that, Army, it was still Army, see. And there was no such thing as Air Force. It was Army Air Corps. Everybody in 700th CIC was Army Air Corps. So they had to have somebody go down to, undercover, to Langley. A deal had come up. A fellow named Shaeffer (sp ?) and I had the only * they were looking for to fill that spot. They had another deal, somewhere. So they should have switched us, because too many people knew me around Bolling, but anyhow, I went down to Langley as though I was a line chief down at that Air force Base. MR: But you were actually undercover R: Oh, yeah, I went down in uniform. And I was there just as though I was, and then the engineering officer needed somebody, he had to have a line chief. You know, after the war people getting out and all this, and somebody with some experience and all that. Somebody that could go with him up to Wright Patterson to order stuff and supplies and I went down and stayed about two weeks. And I just had found out, * to call and tell them to come get me because I had found out what they wanted to know. And I happened to walk in one morning, and walking down through the hangar, and a guy that I used to, when I was up at Bolling, I used to have coffee with him every morning. Some GI, see. Some Master Sergeant. And, he says to me, he says, didn’t know that you were down here. And I says, oh, yeah, I says, they needed a line chief down here and I came in about two weeks ago. And about this time the engineering officer walked up. He says, oh you all know each other. He says, yeah, he says, I don’t understand, this guy just not more than a month ago, I talked to somebody knows you pretty well, you had just graduated from CIC school at Holabird. And * started looking, what I do, what I do, like that, and the officer says, would you two mind going with me over to my office? He says, now tell me, he looked at me, now tell me, what’s going on? I said, I can’t very well do that. But I says, I can hang you. He says, my God, I didn’t know, somebody could have told me. He says, I thought maybe they bounced you out of it. Then I called the CIC people there, and they came over, and explained to the engineering officer, why I was there. He says, well we knew we turned in the request. Called the first sergeant down from the squadron I was assigned to, he says, oh, all of these records that I have signed, what am I going to do with them? I says, just put it in my 201 file and send them up to my outfit. Send them up to, give them to them, those two right guys over there. And they’ll take care of it. Forget about it. You can blank it out. I was never here. So, I went on back. So, and I still didn’t know where I was to be permanently assigned, so

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when I got on back Wirth said to me, he said, they’re setting up a fellow by the name of Cavitt in charge of our office out in Roswell Air Force Base. Walker Air force Base in Roswell, New Mexico. It was Roswell Army Air Force Base at that time.

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MR: Did yo know that was the home of the 509th? You knew, I mean R: Yeah, I’d flown with some of those guys. So, I says, when am I going out? He says, you’re going out and a couple of other guys will be joining you out there. Cavitt knows the whole * and he knows the whole setup, so he said, we sent him out about a week ago. And I says, when do I have to go? And he says, just as soon as you get yourself packed and get out there. And I says, I have a wife a teen age daughter, I have a little, we have a little baby, I said, I own a house and I have furniture. He says, we’ll cut orders on you, and Joe says, Joe Wirth says, I know Mack, I will personally give her these orders, and I will personally assist her in every step of the way. I have a real good real estate man that will deal with us, and he will but your *. He says, I have already talked to him. I said, she might not want to come over. He says, oh, if she don’t he don’t have to buy. But he says, let me know. So I went and told her. Made her unhappy. But I says, *, the doctor thinks you ought to be in a dry climate. And I says, Roswell is dry, I understand. I never been there. MR: Had you ever been to New Mexico? Never? And Mack ? R: So she has never been there either. During the war I was, while we was in California, I come through there on the train. Never stopped, but, I’m not sure I went through there on the train. But, anyhow, I went on out. And I met Cavitt, that was the first time I met him. MR: Well, now was that in the Spring? R: That was still early MR: Still early, in forty seven R: And so I met Cavitt, and I can’t for the life of me remember what the hell the other guy’s name was, but I can’t do that now. There was another guy there, Williams came later. But, so we worked around, what ever came up, came up * and that, so, about every three or four days I’d get a call from Joe Wirth, wanted to know if everything was all right, and he’d talk to Cavitt. And so, he said we’re working on that sale for your house, he says, and * that time, she’s going to try to wait until school’s out. And I said, don’t blame her. And so, of course she didn’t want to break her daughter’s school, the other little girl was just a baby. So anyhow, I had to get a place to live, and I had, I met Marcel. I met Cavitt, and MR: Oh, you met Marcel the too? Right

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R: Oh, yeah. We just, our office was just across the hall, old wooden building. Just across the hall from the A-2 and the S-2. Which were both in there. A fellow by the name of Don Yeager (sp ?) was, I think Marcel was A-2, he was Wing Intelligence, and Yeager was Squadron Intelligence. And then they had a fellow by the name of Trowbridge (sp ?), which was he

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MR: So, you worked closely with the intelligence people there, right? R: Oh, actually we worked hand in glove, because see, in those days, CIC was a little bit out of control of the Army, of the commander. So one of us had to always be at the staff meeting every morning. And a fellow by the name of Blanchard was the Base Commander. MR: Colonel Blanchard? R: Yeah. But, he would come. MR: Did you get along with him? R: Yeah, I got along with him all right. Then, see this is where I, I’m not sure what, if the Army and the Air Force separated MR: Well, they separated R: The first day of July MR: Yeah, right R: So, on that day, they, the setup was that any CID man, under the Provost Marshal, if he wanted to, if he wanted to, they could swing over to CIC. To OSI, it being known as OSI. All CIC men, if you didn’t want it, to go Air Force, you could stay CIC Army, but you would be transferred MR: To another base R: To somewhere else. Unless you couldn’t be there because you didn’t need OSI and CIC on the same base unless it was somewhere near an Army installation. And, I was over at the proving grounds they already had two or three guys over there, and, so MR: So you decided to stay with them R: Oh, I stayed, and one CID man came over with us. And just about that time, Williams was somewhere else, and he went Air Force, so, he, he was a B-24 bomber pilot, and he was with the staff at that time. So, he came down and joined us, as OSI, so we all had to go up to our headquarters up at Kirtland, General, Colonel Reese (sp ?).

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And so we all went up there and all of the (states) of our district was the same boundaries, * same boundaries, FBI, and

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MR: So was there a big meeting around July first when they changed over? R: Up at MR: Up at Kirtland? R: Up at Albuquerque. MR: To discuss the R: Oh, just discuss the policies and who was in the chain of command, and usually, Reese said, asked Cavitt, well why did you bring everybody? He says, well, I thought you’d want everybody. He says, just you and whoever would be your next in command. He says, well, I could have brought Rickett, but he said, I thought you wanted everybody. But, backtracking a little bit, I had a fellow by the name of Major Smith that I was looking for a place to live. MR: Still looking for a place to live? (telephone rings) whoop R: Let me get this (tape is stopped) MR: Sure, I’ll stop this (taping resumes) MR: So, uh R: Anyway, Smith got me a real good place * a lady that never did take a man boarder before that. He gave me a real good recommendation. She asked me, said, why you said you never met this man before, until the other day. She says, well, they * , they don’t have anybody that would * that. That turned out to be real good. I had, she had children all around that part of the County, and so after boarding with her for about two or three months, I became a member of the family so I could get information on most any old place. The Jacobs family was all over, see. * But I, then after, see I cannot remember if this deal that we’re talking about was before the Air Force MR: Split or after? R: The dates in my memory * this whole deal was earlier in the Spring. Or it was just immediately after the Air Force. See, that’s something I don’t know. I have, I haven’t talked to Cav either. Because I still don’t know which side of July it was on. All I know is, I was there. See

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MR: Right. Well, we know from the records that a lot of this happened on July eighth of that year. It must have been just after

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R: So it must have been. We were only, we just, we all went up to, all the * staff drove up to Albuquerque, stayed over night, talked about two hours, had a lot of paperwork back down to us like that, and then when we got back in the next day, Cavitt and I went over to Colonel Blanchard’s office and broke the sad news to him that he, when the sun come up we didn’t have to be, *, he couldn’t tell us to be there, see. We would come if we wanted to. But we would accommodate him, somebody in our office would be there. MR: At the staff meeting R: At the staff meeting. If he wanted us there. MR: What time did they have those, in the morning? R: Nine o’clock MR: Nine? R: He’d hold it until one of us got there. MR: Oh, really? R: Yeah, it was like that. Oh, I knew the 509th. MR: Now, tell me, was the security really tight at the 509th? R: Oh, yeah. It was still kind of a funny time, after the war and all. And they weren’t, here was a strange outfit. It turned out later. * didn’t realize the change in our category from CIC to OSI, then suddenly, this guy Meoli (sp ?) is no longer in Europe, obviously, he’s in civilian clothes, and he’s in the Air Force, see, and he comes in the officer’s club, and everybody try to chase him out, he was a Master Sergeant, and he says, oh, no, * they was confused a little bit. But as long, it didn’t bother Marcel and Yeager and the intelligence, because they could care less. In the first place, they didn’t know if he was there under cover to start with. And they wasn’t about to ask any of us. So, and Cavitt and all, and. We had a, I, I think that things worked better, if everybody that’s in intelligence, works like a family. MR: I would think so R: Because, we’d go to their house, they come over to ours. And usually about twice a month we’d have a party. And we just rotated it around. And there was about six, seven of us, we’d have a party at my house, I’d send my daughter, and she’d take the baby over to Miss Jacob’s house, and she’d stay over there while the party was going on, not that it was a raunchy party, but you just didn’t have to watch your conversation in front of the

13

teenage, high school child. And, so them was there. I’ve been in Marcel’s house, and the kitchen he talks about, I was there, I was sitting in that kitchen, I know that house. I know that * , but

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MR: And his son’s in Montana now. Jesse’s son? Jesse Junior is in Montana. R: Well, I knew that, is he a dentist? MR: Yes, he’s a dentist. R: Well, he was just a ten year old kid. So when you start talking about what he remembered, then I know my daughter, if you talk to my daughter, and she’s fifty six years old, * , she would, I’d lay odds ten to one that she wouldn’t know anything about it. She wouldn’t *. She * there. MR: After it all happened, this whole incident, did you talk to your family about, your daughter ? R: No. We worked on, it was a situation where it was, not only was it top secret, but it was need to know. You just flat * didn’t talk about it, see. Well, as the years went by, ** my wife, she didn’t know about what I deal with Colonel Martin. She simply didn’t know that, but, why have her worry about it. It’s always been my theory, and many years ago in OSI we found out that many times, we saw a lot of high ranking officers and people, they went to a meeting, top secret, and the bridge club knew about it that afternoon. What made the bridge club find that out? MR: wives, huh R: That’s right, its what you don’t need MR: You just can’t talk R: My wife didn’t. She knew better than that, so she didn’t ask me, I didn’t tell her. At any of the parties we ever had, nobody ever brought it up MR: You didn’t talk about work matters at the parties then? R: No, that’s right. When you were at the party, you were at the party. You had, if you were working, then you sat down in ;your office, which Marcel, was one of those guys that he was pretty tight on security around his office. He made absolutely sure there wasn’t any * down there. He seldom ever talked to anybody without some music. MR: Oh, really? R: Yeah. He seldom ever talked to anybody, real classified

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MR: Right, real, were you worried about Russian spies at all? Or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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R: Well, * . They, so all I can remember is that whatever as it happened to be it was after that, that I came in one morning, I got down to * late. MR: What time do you think you got in? R: I must, I must have come to work that morning something happened, I, that sometimes I would take work MR: Home? R: Home with me, just one, maybe a police check or something like that. And, and then, at that time this fellow Jacobs, this lady I lived with, her son, was the only pharmacist in the town, and had been for years. So, I been over to his house many times, and the Chief of Police, and he were very good friends, and I met the Chief of Police, see, so I knew that and I knew the Sheriff MR: Wasn’t, the Sheriff was named Wilcox ? Was it, or what was the Sheriff’s name? R: I don’t know what his name was. The Chief of Police was Roberts. * But anyhow, I had to make a check or something. Something, I never took classified information home. But, so I went on down and didn’t have anything else in that part, and I went on back, and I got in and Cavitt was gone. And I asked, I would imagine I asked her, I don’t know how I would have known it, our secretary, I says, where did Cavitt go? And she says, well him and Major Marcel and some farmer looking person tore out of here all of a sudden. And she says, and they all got some vehicles and took off. And she says, the last thing when he went out the door, he says, when Rick comes back, tell him to be here at one o’clock. MR: At what time? R: To be here at one o’clock. See, so, usually, sometimes I’d eat, we always would try to eat either at the NCO’s club or over at the officer’s club or the airman’s club. We just wanted, the policy at OSI at that time was for everybody to be seen in these places, any the time. MR: Take a couple notes, R: yeah, because if people were used to seeing you, then they would,, and they would also know the outfit you were in, so that if they saw something, or something like that, MR: They’d come up R: Yeah, they wouldn’t talk to a total stranger. I liked to tell them where our office was, and lots of times they come in looking for me, he says, I don’t know the man’s name, but

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he says, where is he? Is anybody (up) with you? He says, Oh, I want to talk to him. If he saw him. It was a good procedure. Oh yeah, we worked like a close knit team. Everybody was friendly, and everybody * and so. But Cav, came back

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MR: Do you know what day that was, or the week at least, when you came in and, couldn’t have been a weekend was it, or… R: Oh, no, no, no MR: So it was a week day R: About the only time we ever worked on a weekend was if something came up that we had to interview somebody and it really had to be on a Saturday morning. That was the only time that military man, say he was out on a flight somewhere, and he, he wouldn’t come in until Friday, and you had to see him. And, you would sometimes go to his house, or sometimes have him come to the office. Our secretary was never there on a Saturday. And, if they had a break in, something under our jurisdiction, depending on where the break in was, then we would, whoever it was, the duty, each person rotated on each weekend. I’d have it on one weekend, somebody would have it on another weekend. And the Provost Marshall would have my phone number. He knew it anyhow, but he’d call you and he’d, look we have this, and the Base Commander would generally just make a fast check on it. MR: So you were, the Provost Marshall was the head of the MPs? R: Yeah MR: Easley, what was R: Darden. MR: Darden R: Yeah. Major Darden. Yeah, he had, he had the military police there patrolling the town there, down the highway there, coming out to the base, and the guards on, you know, straighten up the place MR: Meanwhile, you guys investigated the crimes R: Huh? MR: You investigated crime scenes, or R: Well, yeah, not, * nothing like that, but if there’s a break in, yeah. Like that, or if one of the sentries out on the flight line guarding the airplanes, something come up, he saw somebody out there or he was getting out of the plane, or something to do with something

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like that. And they got to the point where if you walked within ten feet of that intelligence section, they thought he was an espionage, a Russian agent or something. And they would call you. Lot of times I would get up in the middle of the night and go out there and talk to them and say, you’re all nuts. But anyhow he got back and he says, I want you to go with me, he says, I don’t believe what I’ve *

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MR: What time did he get back? R: He got back that *, about one, one fifteen. It was a beautiful day. MR: Was it? Was it warm, nice? R: Wasn’t on a weekend, it probably was, I wouldn’t have had that information with me over the weekend, so, it would have had to have been on a Tuesday through Friday. It had to have been. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on Friday, because, something else MR: So it must have been Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday R: It must have been Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, something, middle of the week. MR: So he got back, and R: He just said want, I want you to go with me somewhere. And I said, where you been? I said, you and Marcel went out of here with some old farmer, he said, some old rancher, not farmer. He says, he’s going to show us something. And he says, he was here yesterday. And, so, that would lead me to believe it was not on a Monday. Something happened that he was in here, so, he says, come in, so we all

-end-

Master Sergeant Lewis Rickett interviewed by Mark Rodeghier

January 1990

[Unintelligible words are shown by *. Words that seem inappropriate in the context are shown in parentheses. Punctuation and spelling is the transcriber's "best guess." Minor

interruptions by the interviewer have been omitted. R is Rickett, A is Rodeghier.] ***

Tape 1, side 1 ***

R: *I said, we have till one thirty? A: OK, right away, huh?

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R: He said, have you had dinner, and I said yeah. You? He says, oh, yeah, I got back about an hour or so ago. Didn't see you'all drive up, he says, Oh, he says, Marcel and I had lunch over at the club, or someplace. As we got out, and I don't for the life of me, I can't remember which way A: You went? R: We went. Other than the fact that we went west. It seems to have been, or it seemed to me that we kept going , as far as I can remember, we didn't pass anything where the planes were, the flight line, just seemed to be off that way. That's the way the base was lined up. A: What kind of a vehicle did you go out in? R: Again it seems to me, I want to think it was a staff car. We had some old Plymouths. And I think I asked him where are we going, and he says, what? to the boondocks, and I said, we'll get stuck in the sand, no, he said, there's a half way road out there. And I said, which, apparently there was. A: Were you driving? R: No, I wasn't driving, he was driving A: He was driving R: I didn't know where I was going A: And was there anybody, just you two in the car? R: Just us two. And so when we, uh, at least that's all I can think of. But, I said, what's going on up there? There was four or five military vehicles, and some A: When you got there? R: Up about a half a mile or so, *up top of the road, you know how the desert is, it's flat, always up and down A: Right R: I don't recognize this place out here. * we get there, he says, Darden's got some of his men up there. So we drive up. He kind of looked at us, you know. And one of them says, you know, me, (Ole), and I says, yeah, I says, hell yeah, I believe I do, I said, I didn't see him today, so apparently that's right, he said that's all right, so they checked our I.D. Darden would have crucified them. They weren't taking any chances.

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A: So they checked I.D.s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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R: They checked I.D.s. Although they knew us, too. A: Did they have guns out? R: Oh, yeah. All of them. All of them had their 45s and I noticed that some of them had a* kind of a gun A: A rifle? R: Reminded me of a grease gun, or something like that, I don't remember A: How many men were there? R: Thompson A: Thompson sub-machine gun? R: Yeah, they're pretty heavy. They had my (sentry)*, it was hot, had my (sentry) carry that thing around* with me A: Did you take any special equipment with you when you left Roswell to go out to the site? R: Did I do what? A: Did you take any special equipment with you when you left Roswell? R: * I just wanted to show you something A: How many men do you think were there at the site when you got there? R: When I got there there must have been...well in that particular group there were five or six, but as we got on up the road, another hundred yards, there must have been 25, 30 people out there. Beside the Provost Marshall. They were scattered. Some of them were out three or four hundred yards. All out in a big circle. Here and there, on top of these little dunes. A: Were they standing guarding, or were they R: They were just standing there. A: Standing there R: I asked them later, why are you all out here? Darden said, he said, I didn't want

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anybody else wandering in here. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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A: So go ahead. I didn't want to interrupt you. So they checked your I.D.s, OK, and what happened next? R: We went up there and Darden came over. He was at the next bunch, this was just the up bunch. It was just as though, as you got there, if you turned around and looked, they were in about the same position that the other guys were. Only we come in at them from the side, see. Like, they were a whole circle, more or less circle, and we come up here, and this group was here. But they were * because this was the only road then. That's, I guess that's * A: Is your eyesight good enough to draw a diagram of the area? R: No A: That's fine. I didn't think so. R: The minute I try to do that, draw a circle, doesn't look very good. *. It was just, seemed to be, you find that all over the southwest, you find just a slight depression, little knolls, dip this way, then if you go on the other side of that knoll, there may be another kind of a flattish area, on the other side of those knolls, up and down, * like that. But those knolls were only ten or 15 feet high, its not very often you see them that high, but they had brush on it, scrub A: Did you have to drive over open range land just to get there, or did you drive on roads? R: *can't say I didn't talk to you about *, cause he said I want to shoot some, he said, Marcel is going to be out here later, and he said, I just thought it would be advisable for somebody else to see it. * and he said, don't walk anywhere until I tell you. A: What was your impression as you started to look across R: It looked to me like, I walked over, I stopped right here, he says, well, what does it look like to you? He says, what's this whole place here look like? I says, that's kind of hard to believe. It looks to me like something landed here. I said, but if it landed here, I don't see any tracks. I don't know how anything could land there and not leave tracks. The sun was pretty bright *. I said, have you been over there? Don't you see what I see? Looks like there's *. I guess that's metal, I, at that time I was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from various closest pieces. I says, is it hot? Can you touch it? He says, yeah, be my guest. That's what I wanted you to ask me. A: So you walked over? R: I just walked over and picked a piece of it up *. To the best of my memory, it had, it

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wasn't perfectly flat, like that. It was 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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A: Slightly curved? R: Slightly curved. There. Some of them were a little * that I saw was just like that, real, real light in weight. A: How big was the piece you picked up? R: The piece I picked up was about R: About four, about six inches? R: Three or four inches wide, maybe eight and a half, ten inches long, and it was just almost like a feather A: Was it lighter than aluminum foil is today? R: Well, it give the impression, it didn't have the feel. When you tried to, I said, A: (interrupting) Could you bend it? R: be all right if I break it? A: And he laughed? R: Cav looked over at Darden, and he says, smart guy! He says, do what we couldn't do. And, go ahead, touch it! Any way, in any description. I said, for God's sake! I said, the best that I could recall, I said, what in the hell is that stuff made out of, I says, it cain't be plastic. I said, don't feel like plastic. But I said, it just flat feels like metal, but I said, I never saw a piece of metal that thin, that you can't bend. A: Was it jagged on the edge, or? R: It was sharp, it looked as though it wasn't cut, it just disappeared. A: It isn't like it was a piece of something that disintegrated and had jagged edges? R: No, it didn't. It just, and some of the edges on some of the pieces, they were about that big, they was kinda curved in a little bit on the edge. Whatever it was, so. We, have a walk around here. I says, what the * doing up on the hill? He says, well I figure we walk over there. That's why * says put on some other shoes, so we can walk around in some dirt. And, we always kept a pair of walking shoes. * A: How much vegetation was there, in the site?

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R: There wasn't much 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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A: Yucca plants, and R: Small A: I was there with Don in September, and there isn't much there, I think the plants are about this big, and R: These guys, anybody you could walk around, it wasn't any higher than you were* So Darden said, don't want anybody coming in here until after you fellows have seen this, and Major Marcel gets back, later in the afternoon. We took all the pictures. A: They took pictures already R: He said, we've taken all the pictures, of the whole. Everything you see, it's on film. He said, they even tried to estimate this shallow place, right in here, where all this is, how much is it but on the other end? But he say, its not hard. So he says, yeah, *, but he says, if you will, if you've noticed, we've already run a string through here, he says, try to stay close to that marker. If he can't, if he insists, if he wants to do something else, he says, let me know and we'll run another one over. But he says A: Do you know, well, go ahead R: So, I walked on over what I figured I get around and see these pieces in various places and not too many of them, some different sizes, not great, big pieces. A: Everything pretty small? R: Yeah, something anywhere, from four or five inches, to a foot* A: Did you see any pieces that were real, very small? Did you see any pieces that were only a inch in, in square inch? R: No. Yeah, but I didn't see any small ones. And which, the more I looked at it, I couldn't imagine what it was. So, then I walked on over there, and I walked over, and talked to one of these MPs, * and he says, what do you need over here? I said, I just wanted to walk from here over to there. He says, it looks like, just like you're over there and I'm over here. And I says, well what's on the other side? And he says, well I know what you're talking about. * He says, I don't know what we're doing, but I do know this. I never talked to you in my life, not out here. I says, what you see out here, you never saw it. He says, that's right. They told you the same thing. Well, I said, you didn't have to tell me that. I said, in the first place, I didn't know what the hell was going on. But, he said, I see you got your boss with ya. And I said, well, let's say I work with him. And, * He said, we just want to keep any, if there happened to be some

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A: Rancher 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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R: Cowboy or rancher up from this direction, maybe see the vehicles over here or something. And, so they, Marcel and his group we talked and Cavitt, them and I talked, and I says, its kind of hard to believe there's something *possible, that something come in, disintegrated. But it didn't blow, but it just vaporized. It just, he said, yep. He says, but what about the pieces? I says, yeah, what about the pieces? So, he says, well you know, says, ** But he says, remember, and Darden was standing there, he says, you and I never saw this. You and I never been out here. We don't see any military people out here, we don't see any vehicles out here. I said, yeah, that's right. We never left the office, in fact. So Marcel came out with kind of a little pickup vehicle. And so we went around in the pickup. All we could find. A: How many men helped him pick things up, do you think? R: Oh, I guess he had five or six, it was everybody in his department. His department or Yeager's department. Cause I knew the guys from seeing them. They were clerks, typists. A: So they weren't anybody special, they were just the guys in his department? R: Everybody*..Marcel asked him later, I said, well, you must have * your office out. He says, mine and Don Yeager's both. He said, Yeager's holding up the fort, both offices. A: So the MPs didn't help pick things up, that you saw? A: They didn't pick up anything. They were still there in the same position as when I arrived R: How long did you stay there at the site? A: We were there, we got back, I guess, into to the office, five o'clock in the afternoon. We usually knocked off between four thirty and five. And Cav says, don't want to get the women excited, he says, let's go on back, after he, he looks over and he says, you'all going to leave? He says, yeah, I think we got all we can find, or something like that. He had some cardboard boxes, and so... A: So you were there while Marcel was there? R: His group. Oh, yeah. A: How long did it take to drive there? From Roswell. How long did it take you to drive from Roswell to this place? R: Couldn't have been more than, it's a fair road, it had been packed down, I mean, the rancher had used it many times, he had a fence around his property out there. He had

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some cattle out there. He said later, so I understand, he didn't tell me, that there was a watering hole over about six or eight miles from there that had some grass and all and the cattle would go there. This was the road that he came out. And this road, I remember that, we went by the place and turned off.

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A: Did it take you more than an hour to drive out? R: Oh, it didn't take about an hour. A: Not that long? R: I would say that you were out there maybe ten miles. A: Ten miles from? R: Ten miles, twelve miles form our office. A: From your office R: You, you couldn't drive. It took us thirty, forty five minutes, something like that. But then we, I know that we didn't get back after * until after supper when I got home. We just pulled right in, went on in and changed clothes, washed my hands. I went home and he did too. And so we got home. It wasn't unusual. She never fixed supper, cause she figured supper would be about five thirty, six o'clock. Course she never knew that A: What time you would get home? R: I couldn't get home at a set time. So, then the next morning we went in, and Marcel had some of these boxes, and I know that right while we were there he wrapped it up, he closed it up, taped it up, put it inside another box, and taped that box. And gave it to Cavitt. And Cavitt gave him a receipt for it. And late that afternoon, all he said to me was, I want you and I to go, there will be a plane here this afternoon. They're coming in for that box. A: And the plane came in? R: The plane came in and I walked over there. The pilot looked at me and I looked at the pilot, I just shook my head. He (shooked) his head, nice seeing you. I knew him. I'd flown with him before. Six months before. A: So he came from, he was from Washington? R: He was from Andrews. A: From Andrews, OK

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R: The next thing that I, I've thought about it many times, I guess Cavitt and I only had maybe two or three conversations about it, he asked me about, why did that copilot look at me. I looked over, and I (heard) you shaking your head at him. I said, I know the guy! Knew him real well. I've flown with him. I didn't want him to recognize me, * didn't know who else was on the airplane. So, they just picked up the box and

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A: Did he just get the box on the plane, turn right around and go? R: He did. He just gave it, and he, he had already gassed it. He come right on over and gassed the plane up. It seems to me that it was a C-54, it was a four engine job. It didn't seem to be a bomber. They had, uh, three or four other people that got out of the plane and walked around. And he, just making me believe that both of them were in CIC or OSI, because they both had to sign it. A: So Cavitt gave the box, he's the one who signed R: They signed the receipt, both of them. * The next thing that I can really recall, was I was talking to Wirth one day. He called me up one day on the phone. He went OSI. And it was something about, it had something to do with our furniture that hadn't gotten there yet, or something. That was shipped, or something like that. A: Do you have any idea when this might have been? Roughly? That call? R: No, it must have been August, September, something like that. My wife sold the house, and when she come out, A: They shipped the furniture, right? R: Everything was listed by numbers, each box like this, every box had a number. It just said something, I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't on it. It didn't come in. I wrote a letter back and told them to check somebody with this box number, showing a copy of the invoice, that we didn't get it yet. And so, he called me, and says, we're flying the box out. He says, what's in it? Valuable? I says, can't find it. She packed the box. I wasn't there when she packed it. But, I said, I want to ask you something. I says, there was an airplane flew in here one of these days, some time ago. He says, now you stop it, right there. Didn't no airplane come in there. Didn't anybody get anything. He says, and we haven't found out yet if there was a box, what it was. I said, oh, OK. So, next time I saw Joe Wirth was 15 years later, and he was back on the Park Police, and he says, you know, he says, you almost got me in a little bit of a bind, but he says, I think we covered ourselves. I says, planes come into that base all the time, the boxes ride on the Air Force plane, I says, couldn't anybody get court-martialed for a thing like that, I says. But, he says, You walk out through here in this parking lot, he says, let's talk for a minute. And we went into the parking lot. I said, just * Yeah, he says, I'm not military,

25

but he says, I'm Park Police, but he says, I hold my reserve commission. He says, honest to God, he says, they haven't found yet just what that was, what that metal was. I says, well, it looked to me like, I says, you know what Monel looks like? And he says, yeah, but he says, Monel would be too heavy, I seen some sheets of Monel, and they'll give a little bit. And, that was our last answer, he says, you and I have just (rehearsed) all the time to, he and I both owned a house down in Silver Springs, down there, I said, yeah.

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He said, where are ya? I said, I'm out of the service, after I got out, in forty-nine. And I happened to be up in there at this end, *. And I wanted to go by our headquarters, our former headquarters, and see if there was anybody there I'd see that I knew. A couple of them I knew, some of them I didn't. Miller just retired, I ran into Miller up here *. OSI, OSI club. * And, I didn't even know he was there. And I walked in and I said, I'll be damned, * there, I said, I thought you had TB and died 20 years ago. He said, not yet. He still looked like the same. He said, the answer's still the same, don't ask me! (laughter). A: Do you think those guys really know, though, they don't want to talk about it. R: * A: But do you think they know more than you do, really? R: Not really. He might know what the metal is. If they found out. He might know *, I don't know if he ever seen it. A: What do you think would have happened to that box, when it got to Andrews? R: I don't know, but I spent, oh, I must have spent a month, The Air Force, Doctor Lincoln La Paz, from the University of New Mexico, he was hired I think during the summer, *, he was an anthropologist? Or, A: He was an R: Geologist A: He was a geologist, astronomer, and yeah R: Astronomer, astrologist. So, the Air Force hired him to go out to there and dig out what he could dig. Every now and then it would surface, you know, and this was in 1948. A: 48 they hired him? R: Might have been late 47. Because, my wife was there. And it was still kind of pretty hush-hush. And Colonel Reese called me, he said, look, we've sent for Dr. Lincoln La Paz. Hate to have Cavitt go with him. You were with Cavitt. Don't talk to Lincoln La

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Paz about anything, unless he asks you. He's cleared, need to know, Top Secret. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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So he says, if he wants to ask you anything, he says, you can talk to him if you want to. But he said, he probably won't but he probably will. What we want you to do, and he knows what we want you to do, * to be talking about something like that, see. So, I says, all right. I says, can I tell my wife how long? He says, just tell your wife you've got a job, and if she needs to know where you are, call Cavitt, because you're going to talk to Cavitt every day, wherever you are, at least he'll know where you are. So, he says, I understand that you, you'all good friends, and your wife knows Mary and Mary knows Mack, and. He says, that's an odd name for a woman. I said, yeah, she had it when I got married to her, in 1930, 31. I met her in 29, she was Mack then, she's Mack now. He says, La Paz, I've never seen him. But then, Cavitt told me of your being here, he says. It seems to me that we used a staff car, but, somewhere, and then I can see myself in a jeep out in there, so apparently, we must have pulled in to El Paso. * Air Force Base down there, picked up a jeep and left the staff car there, which is the only logical explanation. Because we were off, off the hard surface roads. A: Did La Paz come to Roswell, too? R: Oh, La Paz came down *, I brought him in to the house and he met my wife, and he had dinner the evening he got there. A: What did he tell you, when you sat down to say,? R: I want you to go with me. He says, I want to check some of these, now don't laugh about this. I says, I'm not about to laugh. And he says, from now on I'm not talking, I'm just * to you. He says, we've got a lot of these flying saucer reports. Some lights around. He says, I want to see what's going on, if I can find out. And he says, you know the territory all the way down past Carlsbad on into, down through there all the way into El Paso and on into way into Tucson. Lot's of times, I'd be gone for a day or two. A: Driving over? R: Driving. Cause I knew pretty much the country. And so, we took off, and he was keeping his keeping his notes while, well, actually, I asked the Colonel, did I have to keep any notes on this, and he says, no, he says, Dr. La Paz will write it up. And he says, I'll have you come up here and you approve it, as far as OSI is concerned. We'll write a little memorandum that you had read his notes of his report and you agree with it, or you disagree with it, and that will satisfy us. Unless you really find something. And I said, all right. As long as I don't have to keep notes. He says, your job is just to help him, get him where he wants to go. Be with him, answer any questions he might have. About anything? He says, yes, about anything. So we took off, and he talked to everybody, and he asked * everybody that had sighted any lights or anything, we would talk to them. A: How did you find them, how did you know who to talk to?

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R: Well, we would, normally, the first thing I ever did, I had to do it anyhow, is hit the police department. In every little two-bit town, their sheriff, police department. I had all the * with me, *, so we would just ask them, says, any strange lights or anything down here like this? And, they would say no, or give us a few minutes, or something like that, give me a while and we check it out. He says, there's an old rancher by the name of so and so, come in here, said his cattle acted like they were scared to death. So, where does he live? So we go out there and like that. Then he, lot's of times, they would say we was at a cattle auction somewhere else, and they saw the same thing of lights somewhere else, you see. We tried to pin it down, but you know how they are, you can't get it within a day or two, or three days if you're lucky. And, then sometimes we would come back into the town and we would talk to the sheriff or the chief of police. How they act every day, are they drunk, are they really drunk? He says, well who's to talk to them, well God knows, he owns half the * out there, he's out there half the time. But, so, we went on out. * and I didn't realize it at the time, well I knew that he had a topographical map with him, and he was trying to, wherever these guys * to, and we were almost finished up, and we were on our way back in, he says, you never asked me any questions about that map I been keepin'. I says, well I says, I know where I am, most of the time. But it seems to me that we're running kind of a long, sweeping curve A: Where, where at? R: I said, where we've been. We started from Roswell, and come on down, and if we had kept on a straight line we'd be in Mexico, right down in Mexico now, wouldn't we? He laughed, yeah. I says, you know when we made the turn, or something. I says, yeah. I says, we were up above El Paso, then went on over, into Arizona. * We were after what you wanted, and we were finding out I think what you wanted to know. And I says, how did you figure it out? And he says, well, when we finish it up, and get as far as I think we ought to go, or something, he says, we'll sit down, and I'll show ya. And he said, see if you agree with me on what we ought to do on the backtrack. So, he said, the first trip down we were pushing a little bit for time, I says, I got all the time in the world. He says, I understand that you're with the Air Force, you're a serviceman. I said, no, I don't know who told you that. Well, he says, least I was told that, all you people * service people. So, I said, I got plenty of time. He says, you got a nice wife. I said, I sure have. I * too soon. I spent two and a half years in Europe, I said, that was too long staying away from her. A: Did you get along with La Paz? R: Oh, by gosh, yeah. He was a nice old guy, you can talk to her, she'll tell you that, he was a nice old guy. He'd keep her awake half the night talking about some of those things. He was a very * about what we were doing.

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A: Oh, really? He really enjoyed talking about it? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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R: Oh, he enjoyed it immensely. And he said, well you see here, and he said, now we stopped on our way back, we stopped and took these guys out, and they, they saw that. The first one. But they didn't see three, they didn't see one, they saw three lights. I said, *. All right, they said, over here, we saw three lights. In fact the, must have been the same night, because these guys are out three or four days or something like that. He said, but some time during the week, * says. There was something that started it out, that I could've pinned it down within two or three days of that date. From that time on it was just a matter of, could it have been that? Oh, yeah, it was over there, or something, they started to remember. So, we gone over there, and we talked to the same people. We went back, and they said, thought you'all gone away. And, we'd take 'em in town, buy 'em a dinner or something like that, you know. These old cowboys out on a *, you know, especially if they had a note from the boss, that they could come into town with us, and they enjoyed the evening meal. A: So, where did you get the money to pay the R: They talked out there, not in there for the, they talked to us in there, so, uh. Finally, we, on a backtrack, we discovered what we had missed on the out trip. That this guy made a remark that he didn't tell us on the first time. He said, we was out here, these lights kinda come in low, over there, and come on in. And, he says, they just barely skimmed across the top of it, and went on over there. Went on out of sight. A: You mean the top of the hill? R: I said, what do you mean, over there? They said, come on, we're taking you back over there. I assumed that, all it was that, something had barely touched the top of the hill. And, La Paz said, do you figure I ought to take a picture of it, he says, what! the sand blows up. I said, that's right. And I said, are you sure something touched down out there? He said, it didn't stop. It was going like a bat out of hell. (laughter). And he said, it scared my old horse half to death. And he said, there was three of them. Only, looked like one of them came down, the rest of them went * way a little bit. It seemed like they were, they weren't flying like the military do in formation, like a perfect V, he said, but they weren't like lined up thisaway, one here, one over here and one over here, or something like that. But, they were together, at least I thought he said. I told my boss about it, he said, he swears I was sipping some whiskey out here, I said, I certainly didn't do that. They said sure be curious some day to find out what it was. I said, oh, you're familiar with St. Elmo's Fire, and he says, yeah. He says yeah, * after a storm. and I says, yeah. We went on over, I guess it was twenty miles, thirty miles, before we saw the next group that we saw. And it just kept following that same pattern, all the way back in. It seemed to be just skipping, like you would skip a rock.

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A: So you really were reconstruct the path of uh, kind of? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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R: Well, I couldn't tell ya, without the map. I knew it was, sometimes we would say pull into a little country store, and then we would go out maybe eight, ten miles out to where this guy had a cabin out there, and then he'd take us on foot up there. And the next place would be in a little town. Like I say, with my memory, I could have set down at that time, yeah, A: How long did you spend, total, with La Paz in the field? R: A month. Five weeks, or six weeks. She doesn't remember anything. She knows we was gone too long, she says. Then the closer we got up, to, back to Roswell, there were definitely impressions that this thing was in trouble. Whatever it was, it was in trouble. The last one, I can remember, made more impression in my mind, * got back over it, we were about, we pulled into a little gathering point where these, a railroad siding, where they bring up beef to ship, the cattle and they bring their beef there to load it to send it to market. Well, from there over into the (bullrush) we, the guy, the owner of that ranch was there and he had a jeep. So he took us over there by car. In fact, we was back in the car*** thirty, forty miles below Artesia. About half way between Artesia and Carlsbad, there was this, I ran into it later, and I had to talk to the guy there who was in charge of the pen about something else. And he laughed, and he says, did you ever find what you were looking about over there? And I says, enough to satisfy the old man. He knew La Paz, La Paz was only about two or three years older than I was. And, so, at that one you could actually still see it. A: You could see a mark on the ground? R: Oh, yeah. You could see something drug across the top of it. *dropping down, and he was * about to. A: Did La Paz take any soil samples, what, did La Paz take any measurements, or? R: He tapped on it, and he said it was hard, but it wasn't that hard, and there wasn't nothing there. There was no * of sagebrush, there was no sagebrush there, or anything, and then there's no vegetation, so it was just a spot I guess about the size of this living room. Looked just like something had come in and, like that way. And, then the next place was up there where we found. A: The next place was the spot. Did you know... R: * Later on, La Paz called me on the phone. And he says you * funny *. He said, we never followed that thing, not with you, but he says, whatever that was, I think one of them didn't make it. Cause there were three, if three of them got there, somebody, some other rancher back in there said he saw some light come by there. And then when he looked thataway, there were only two lights.

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R: Yeah. So, he went back there and he got somebody from his department, they went back out there. Because, from there over to the foothills of the mountains, there wasn't anything, but *, just plain desert, all up through there, for 75 miles. Nobody had houses, nobody to hit the * nothing like that. When it hit the treeline, something went up through there and took the treeline out for about a hundred yards. Just took a whole row of trees right out. Just, cut 'em out. Just as though you just cut 'em down. Wasn't anything there. Treeline stopped, treeline here. And I went up there, and I said, now you got my curiosity aroused. I says, I'm gonna call Colonel Reese and ask him, can I come up there? And I want you to meet me out at that crossing. And he says, yeah. He says, fact is, you don't have to call him. I'll call him. And he says, let him call you and tell you the directions. And when I could make it. And I guess a week or two went by, I came in, Cavitt says to me, he says, you still on that hunt? I says, yeah. He says, well, Colonel Reese called and said to be up there at that crossroads restaurant about noon tomorrow. I said, allright. He said, you get you an early start. I said, it's not bad, it's only up there 115, 120 miles, I'll drive it in an hour and a half. He says, you'll * one of these days. It's a straight line up there, A: You like to drive fast? R: No, but wasn't nothing on the road, but those fences and those telephone poles. We had an old Plymouth, had Dodge engines in em, and you can drive 70 miles an hour. Just set it there, and let the wind blow on ya. I left, I knew a restaurant was there, my wife wanted to know * I said, I'd get something to eat up there. * The Air Force * the lunch. We went up there and he said, I thought you'd bring a jeep. We'll need one. I said, we'll get one. And so, the guy that runs the restaurant, had a World War II jeep. I said to him, can I borrow your jeep? A: What, where was this at, what town was closest, or what? R: The town, it was about, uh, a little crossroads, *. A: What direction from Roswell? R: It was about 75 miles east of Albuquerque. And, I forget if that was route sixty, or something. Anyhow, it was just a road. And, so we went up there, and he says, that beats anything I ever saw. It just * that way, it was just gradually uphill. It just * something. Just cut down the trees. Just a few * around. No skid marks * A: Did anybody see that happen? R: No. He said, I said, nobody see it? He says, no. He says, I'll bet I talked to everybody and his brother, and there's not very many of them up in here. He says, *, just

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up through there like that, and it stopped. * something like that. *** He says, that and that other mess. He says, you know that damned, he says, I'll always be curious, I think that crashed, it vaporized. Apparently, if they had brains enough to come in and do what they were doing, they had brains enough to rig that thing up so it would vaporize. He says, I think what happened, on that one

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end of tape 1, side 1 transcribed by R. J. Durant

Bill Rickett

January 1990 -- tape 2 side A {R = Rickett, MR = Mark Rodeghier, * = unintelligible word}

R: ...deal with the Air Force, they're paying me my salary, the Air force will reimburse them, but they want to know, I flew into Washington, I says, I saw what you saw. No, he says, I asked, he said, actually, you're not dumb enough, you don't believe a higher civilization somewhere out in this atmosphere than us, he says, years and years have passed because I can take you, I can show you in writing, such writing as they had in those days, four or five or six hundred years ago, there were these strange lights *, he says, if you don't believe it, if that don't satisfy you, if you want *, I can take you down to South America on the top of a mountain about 12,000 feet and I'll show you a flat place up there that's about seven or eight miles long. It must be a quarter mile wide, * you ever laid eyes on, * He says, it's just as hard as you can do it * I can take you to another place over there where, he says, they've go things on the ground. There's a higher civilization lived down there, so he says, if they've prepared that place for the people to land down there or something, and he says, I don't know that. But we do know that what I think has disturbed us before * back through * he says, there's a hundred years between them. He says, there's a lot of this going on now, he says, we've tested the atomic bombs * so he says, I think their instruments, whatever they are, it does something. So, they come in and take a look. They don't , it's not enough to, *what can I say, this wasn't, maybe their planet was dying, maybe it wasn't. Then they wanted a place to go, but he said, maybe this wasn't what they wanted. Maybe they wanted to make sure they could, they could live here, who knows. But this, he says, *all of these things are a little bit closer than those are. He says no, I figure they're the same thing. I don't know, but he says, I would say, it's * B-50s, B-29s. fair size, * I don't figure MR: So not as big as a big bomber, but R: He said it was, I would be shaped like that * but he said that, he said, the day would come when they decide that they might want to take a look. He said, they would come in, and they might have something different, who knows what they'd do. He says, the day I die, I'll die believing that there's some form of human , some form of intelligence .

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Probably they sent robots, I don't know about it. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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MR: He didn't know whether there was anything living in there R: He says, you hear all this stuff about these little green men and *, but he said, I don't believe it. He said, some day, this country will invent a system to go up to these planets, and he says, and we'll probably go up just as far as we can see, but he says, I'll say to you this right now, there are planets beyond what we can see with the telescopes that we have today. He says, they're just not powerful enough * MR: He was right R: And he says, if you believe in the lord almighty, he says, just because he put this planet here, doesn't mean he couldn't put one somewhere else. MR: Now, what did you think about all this at the time, when you were hearing this from him, you know? R: I said, I didn't see those lights. And he laughed, he says, no you didn't see them, but I have a feeling that if you could see them that you would believe them. He says, some of these people who see those things actually saw them. But when you find a guy and one landed and he got out and he walked over to him, he says, that's the biggest liar in the world. Don't believe him. (both laugh) But he said, I believe that. He says, now this * come true, he says, no, and I asked for an explanation, he says the thing came in, he says, I actually believe that they were circling around, and they was getting lower and lower, and they decided they wanted to take it lower, and he said, they came in over, and one of them, had a, started to malfunction. He said, because it must have been out over the Pacific coast. But he says, the other two stayed with it. Which leads him to believe, it was either a robot in it or some form of people that MR: unintelligent R: Course, he said, * unless they had communication, back to the base or whatever it was, that said, stay with it, stay with it. Then they could help MR: So they stayed with it while it was coming down lower and lower? R: So, so the pilot says what? Cause he said, remember now, the first sighting, and we didn't want to get out that far, was that it had come in over New Mexico from Baja, California, it had come in over the Pacific at that latitude, and just come on down, and this one was trying to get up and then it would go down, try to get up and then it would go down, so apparently what, it had landed, and they would probably have enough * fly it down, there's no forward speed. And I asked him, I said, now wait a minute, according to my understanding *I said, bat out of hell, * forty, fifty, sixty, seventy miles, who knows, I said, and no skid marks. And he said, well, it's very likely they come in and set it, it just sat. Controlling the forward speed, and they just set it down. Maybe the others could

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control it. And they could hold it. * and set it down, and it disintegrated. And if they did, or if it self disintegrated, he said, because, I didn't ask him any questions about what he looked * at it, and what's the size, the shape of it, but he says, how could it get there? And he says, the other two had something to do with it. He says, I wish somebody would have been out looking for it. These other two were probably making a circle. Big wide circle. And probably one of them, probably the one that did this got a little too low, landed up here on the side of the mountain, see, and the other, never did find anything about it.

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MR: Did, do you think that La Paz, well, first, did he show you his report? Did you read his report, or not? R: * MR: Yeah, so that was pretty much his report. And was his report classified top secret, or how was it? Do you remember that? R: The last time I saw it, they were sitting in the office. And, he said, well, did you read it? He said, do you agree with what I said? I said, Yeah, I said, that's pretty much *, I said, you didn't give them your opinion about what you thought happened, and he says, Oh, yes I did. It's in there, just raise up another page, so he talked about it, some. His theory, he said, what happened, the thing was starting to fall, and they picked a place out and set it down, MR: and then it vaporized R: vaporized, whatever it does, it has been damaged, even, if it ain't vaporized, * it vaporized itself on the ground, * robot in there * it was probably flying, he says, in big circles coming in. * the other ones flying like that, and when it was gone, it, whatever vaporized it MR: They took off? R: took off, and what it, apparently might have lost some power or something, doing this, or whatever it was MR: Hit some trees? R: I don't know that. * The path that they took up here *what would have been similar to the sites that we, place that we looked at, but he says, so MR: How wide was that, through the trees that you saw, how wide was that path? R: Oh, I would say, thirty five, forty feet. And it ran out through there about 150, 200 yards. He said, I talked to people around here and they didn't see any light or anything else. And they don't know what happened there. They says, it's always been there. *

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(laughing) I remember as a kid I come up through here. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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MR: Did you go with La Paz to the site where, R: Up there MR: no to the place where you saw the debris. R: Oh, no MR: You didn't go there R: No, didn't go there MR: Wonder why? You'd think he would want to go there R: By that time there wasn't anything there to see. And we took off, I know that La Paz, he stayed, he left our house, Cavitt and I took him back out to the base and he stayed in the existing officer's club. There was quarters there, VIP quarters. And then I moved him, in the car. MR: When you were at, going back to the site where the debris was, did you see any marks on the ground? R: Actually, there was none. MR: No marks R: What it was, was a sit down. And that's why they put out this theory on, * story, a balloon. MR: Now, what do you think about that story? R: Have you ever seen the stuff it was made out of? MR: Yeah, I've seen the pictures and also the little bit of it R: Do you believe that? MR: I don't believe it. But what did you think about it when you heard that that was what the military was saying? R: (laughing) * I said, Captain, did you read the papers? He said, yeah, let's don't talk about it. (both laugh) They're nuts around here. MR: That brings up an interesting question, because I know you're having trouble

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remembering the exact day, which I understand, here is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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R: I can remember being here with him, and then the next time I'm there with him, and then when I talked to my wife, she says, well you were with him all the time. I says, I know I was, but I can't remember, how did we drive? I forget from here over to there. And La Paz, I guess he's gone by now MR: Yeah, I'm afraid he did. He died a couple of years ago R: Well, a smart man MR: He really was. He did a lot of other things than astronomy and all of that. In fact, the fellow who began the group I'm with was a good friend of La Paz. Doctor Hynek knew him quite well. Anyway, let me ask, on July 8th, which was a Tuesday, Colonel Blanchard had Walter Haut release the press release. And the press release said, the 509th has found a flying disc, and Major Marcel has gone out and picked the pieces up. Now, why do you think that he did that. Why would he say something like that to the press? R: Let's put it this way. They called him Butch Blanchard. He played football for Notre Dame. MR: He did? I didn't know that. R: And I'm like the guy that said about Ronald Reagan, he should have worn more helmets, when he played football. I think Blanchard, I * La Paz. He was a hotshot. And he liked to MR: He looked for the glory, a little bit? R: he looked for the glory MR: So you think he made a mistake in judgment? R: I think he made a mistake, * I was there, in Alaska, in 1950, at Elmendorf, and I had to go out to Cold Bay to interview some people, and they had a big B-29 tanker, was going out there, and so my boss said, hop a ride out there, he says, there'll be a plane Shemya in about three days. So he says, you can fly back with them. You can go from one place to the other. Cold Bay was 1,200 miles from Anchorage, out on the Aleutian chain, see, *. One stop, and the next stop. After the war, * Shemya*. This B-29 come in, tanker version of it. My boss went down with me, and we was talking in operations. Yes, he says, I know, I got you on orders to fly out. This plane comes back * the operations officer in Cold Bay has orders, priority, top to put you on the plane. * back. He says, I understand that you've got about day and a half, maybe two days work at the most. I said, well yeah, I, who knows. And I said, I tell my boss, if I don't do it, I'll have them wire you that I'm delayed, and I'll catch the next one through. And so, we're sitting

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in operations and this guy came in, and he says, well I've got my crew and I'm ready to leave, and who is that guy that wants to fly with me out to Cold Bay, he says, he'd better have his cold weather gear on. I says, I don't wear that kind of crap. And he turned around, and he says, my God! I haven't seen you since you was at Walker. He says, what you doing up here? I says, I'm going to Cold Bay with you. He says, you've got more nerve than I've got. I says, you flying? I asked that question, I know Cold Bay, and I want to know who's going to fly that airplane. Yeah, he says, I'm flying. I'll get it in there, he says, tricky. I says, Yeah, it sure is. And in case you happen to ask, the weather is temperamental, it changes weather every two hours. He said, I heard about that. He said, you hear about last night when I come in here? I says, you better listen to these people around here. They have what they call ice fog. I don't know if you've heard of it.

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MR: I've heard of it, yeah R: But, this way, you can't see, its just like you're blind. From there up, you can see the ground. The other way, you can see, see it just perfect. So he said, I come in, I'm real tired. How long you been in the air? He says, about ten hours. And I called in for instructions to land, and they said go around and come in GCA. He said, wait, I'm dead tired and everybody on this airplane is, and I'm going to come in. And he says, take it around and do it, do not crash, the operations officer will have a few words to say to you, if you have one. He says, all right, but I want to have him, this operations * when I get here. MR: Take it around? R: Come around, they popped out of that hill, he says, My God, *, Katy bar the door! MR: Couldn't see a thing? R: so I told ground control, I says, thank you, thank you, thank you. He says, can you see that follow me jeep out there? He says, yeah, I damn near run over it. Well, follow him in. He says, no more smart remarks on the air. come on in the operations officer wants to talk to you. Couldn't believe this! We don't want you to crash, but he says, when there's ground fog. He says, I never saw that stuff! He said, I could still see the ground. Popped out over that hill. but, anyhow. MR: So Blanchard was a hot shot, wasn't he? R: Blanchard was a hot shot. This guy Riley, a real good pilot, on the way up I sat up in the seat right behind the pilot, copilot. and he says, I want to talk to you about Cold Bay, he says, they don't have icebergs out there? No, I said, no they don't have any icebergs. But I'll tell you one thing, they do have, I says, this time of day normally they've got a heck of a wind that comes down that mountain range. And I says, buddy, you better do what he tells you to, or we'll all wrap ourselves out of there like that. I says, Let me hear it. I had the headphones on. He says, all right. So, the control tower at Cold Bay called him back, and says, we're having one of those freak wind storms coming on off that

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mountain. Well, he says should I go around and wait. He says, you might have four or five hours to wait. He said, I got plenty in there. He says, you're not afraid of the challenge, are you? He says no, I'm a Major, I guess I can bring this thing in when you say so. bring it in wit one wing down. He says, and I'll tell you right now, if you get that right wing up in the air a little bit, he says, you're going to lose it. I might do that. this is a big airplane.

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MR: He came in like this? R: Yeah. Just about the time, he says, bring it in, just about the time you do, cut your power, flatten it down. That's hard on the landing gear. He says, it's either the landing gear or your neck out in the bay. That water's below freezing. He says all right. So he brought it in real just like that. He says to me, he says, I don't like this. *he and the other guy, wonderful, wonderful, keep doing it that way. Just about that time he says, cut the power. And the tower says, fine. Boom. MR: It hit the ground? R: we bounced he says * so we went on in, taxied in, and like that, so they told him are you going to stay overnight? And he said yeah. Well, I don't have to tell you how to take care of your aircraft, mechanics know how to take care of their aircraft, but if I were you, I would tie it down, but I would put a pilot and a flight engineer in that airplane, and a couple men, because, and he says, when I call them on the radio, start your two inboard engines, because the wind is going to come through here, and it's going to fly itself. If you don't. Keep it into the wind because, keep her on the ground. So the wind was getting up at about that time. Some character went by in a jeep on the ground out there, everything was blowing * went on down, and it was supposed to have made a turn, he run that right into the mountain. MR: He couldn't stop? R: The jeep * so, * so abut ten o'clock the operations officer came in, and he said, which of you two men are you going to put in the airplane? He said, well, I don't believe that, but he says, I don't trust anything to two men that I don't know anything abut. I'm going to do it, and he's going to do it, for abut two hours, then two other guys are going to come out, he says, I'm going to tell them to do that, but they're not going to be able to get in the damn airplane. And he says, all right. Now what I want you to do is stay with the wind. When I call you up on the radio, start your engines up, give it a little bit of power, he says, you'll know it , and he says, keep it headed into the wind. Now, it's going to get light. That thing will come right up. But he says, keep the power just so that you won't roll backwards. He says, so you'll be in, right there. have some markings so you'll be sure you're not drifting backward. He says, you gotta be joking. He says, no, there are many tricks, he says, shut it off and come in and go to bed. (laughter) So for about five hours they * I swear to God, he says, that's the first time I saw an airplane that big come full strut above ground. And he says,

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R: he says, we just set in there praying all that night. MR: Not much sleep, eh? R: He says, I didn't get much sleep. I'm going to go get some now. But I did my work, and I got up the next day, and I, a C-54 was coming in from Shemya and I * just a real calm day. I took off out of there. I * that would be my luck, he says, how did you do in Shemya? I says, oh, fine. but he said, I went on * stayed about two days, I went on in Japan, and he said, it was only 1,800 miles from Shemya to Tokyo, Japan. But * it's just fun * MR: It is interesting. You've been all over the world, really have. Let me get back to the, just for a second, that's OK, that's all right. Let me ask about Brazel. Brazel was the rancher, the ranch hand, who came into the Sheriff and said I've found this stuff. R: I never did meet him MR: No never met him R: I never met him. Not out there. They were gone when I got there, and MR: Did you ever hear about what happened to him, in the sense of did the military made him stay quiet, or did you hear anything about it at all? R: If his name * ever come up, it would have been over in Marcel's department, because we didn't get into it, that I knew of, Cav might have, but I doubt seriously. Usually I knew everything that come into the office. The, Cav didn't do it, but the, our secretary, was related to*, it wouldn't have made any difference, she had a top secret clearance. she might have mentioned it, but she never did. MR: Now, did you talk to Jesse Marcel at all about this stuff? R: No. Just like I say, I, he could have taken, there's always a possibility, but, when that boy said that they had that scattered all over, just * and they buried it in that cement, and that kitchen, that kitchen floor, I'll show you mine, *, in the first place * I think, he might have had a couple of pieces there. That's between you and I, * but it seems to me to the best of my recollection that the same type of box that we sent out was a couple of them sitting in his garage. So it's a possibility that he brought back the box* there's no way, when you were ten years old, if you tore the rim off your bicycle you might remember it, but MR: You probably wouldn't remember that R: I've got two children I've drug all over these United States, we come out of Alaska

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with my car. My wife drove from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, with the car, and shipped it up and had it, we shipped it back, I got the car, and drove it 4,400 miles, to McDill. And I hate to tell you what the inside of that car looked like.

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MR: I bet R: * the continental divide, I know that, we took pictures of that MR: If you stop, and that's right R: went through a tunnel, they remember that, they remember the boat, the oldest daughter was only about six, six and a half years old. I know she got her little finger on her left hand in the door jamb above these, both these doors, * almost flattened it. If she hadn't been as young as she was, it would have ben * Had her finger all up, kept the splint she had on it as a keepsake, till she was abut fifteen. she passed away. MR: Oh, that's a shame R: about nine years ago, I guess, she had two beautiful children MR: When you went out to the site, whatever day it was, when you went out there with Cavitt, and you saw the debris there, if you got all of it together, how much would it have taken to carry it back, you know, how many boxes, how big, a garbage truck R: Oh, I would say (long pause while he whistles) if you put it down flat, side by side, (more whistling) MR: and then pile it on top of each other R: oh, oh, I would say, altogether, I would say you could put it about as high as that table. MR: so it would be a foot and a half R: it would be a foot and a half, not quite as long as that table. I mean, you and I, if we could get our hands around it, if we could get a container that you could pick it up, you * pick it up MR: so there wasn't a lot, of debris when you got there R: want to say, not a lot, might have been thirty, forty, fifty pieces MR: Thirty, forty, fifty pieces, yeah R: some of them were * like that, even putting pieces together wasn't heavy. I mean, you * pieces of paper * you get a whole

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MR: did you see any other kind of debris except for this curving metallic or plastic looking, did you see anything else? R: As I say now, it was just concave, just slightly. I mean, you pick up a piece and you look at it and say that's pretty flat, you pick the other one up and you can see between them. But that's the only way you could tell the difference. MR: so, just slight curved. Very slight R: Just a little bit of a curve which would, La Paz must have seen it. MR: He said he did R: I saw pictures, he must have seen it. Because he said to me, he says, when that thing self disintegrated, if that's what happened, vaporized, he said, I can't use the word disintegrate because there would be pieces of it, but when it vaporized he says, perhaps something was bent. something like that. * whatever caused it to vaporize didn't get there. He said, I have a theory that's kind of far fetched, he says, don't know if it ever been * or not, but it must have had some form of vapor or something in lines or something all the way through every bit of it, so that the whole inside might have been, if it was a person, or persons, they had living space in there, they had cameras in there, a propulsion system in there, but the whole inside of it was air tight, it had to be. But, he says, the whole inside of it was filled with something, I mean, self, vaporized. Whatever this stuff was made out of, it reacted with that and just vaporized into nothing. so he says, when it come in, it might have been bent, if it could possibly have been bent, but he says, whatever the speed, it was going like a bat out of hell, it was, which I would imagine was 1,500 or 2,000 miles an hour MR: did he try to estimate the speed, or. did La Paz try to estimate the speed? R: He did. Well, it was so fast, because. We said to the old boy that was sitting there, I says, where did you see it? Well, he said, there's a big mountain over in there, when I looked up I first saw it just before it hit* the mountain. He says, it went like that. He says, and it was way over there, and he says, if I'd have looked anywhere else I'd have missed it. but he said, (swish sound) just like that. Almost, he said, one * would you say, have you seen lightning? He said, you asked me that question out here? (laughter) When you saw the flash here to there, he says, now you look up in the air, you know darn well, you see lightning go this way. From where you are, when you look up in the air, you're pretty sure that from here, over here where you didn't see it, couple hundred miles? The guy said, I, how high was it? He says, when you see lightning out here, he says, in the summer evening, late in the evening, those clouds are probably forty, fifty feet, fifty thousand. Forty, fifty thousand feet up. Could be a little bit lower. But he says, from here to here, in any estimate, he says, say it was only fifty miles, from the ground up, fifty miles, it was going like that in a flash, he says, you're right, going like a bat out of hell. So he said, we discussed that various times.

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MR: Did you ever see him after, after that, you know, the crossroads, where you met him? R: What time. No. Where they opened up the * ? MR: No, La Paz R: The last time I saw La Paz was up at Albuquerque when he had his notes. But, I'll take that back, I saw him one time, just for a couple of hours out at this crossroads. MR: Oh, yeah, but besides that though, the other time was with the notes R: I don't think * MR: Right. Do you think that when La Paz went to Washington, do you think the military, I know he was still a civilian, even if he had a clearance. Do you think they would have told him everything that happened, just your best guess, or in those situations, do you think they'd leave something back? To keep him from... R: Well, I don't * they wanted to prove something. See, really. See, there have been other sightings elsewhere, around the United States. So they wanted to, this was one where they saw something *. Somewhere up in North Carolina, some old boy * something might have * taken a similar path. The * was burnt. Nobody ever saw the fire. They could just see where it had burnt. It had been burned. * just stumps, no trees. There were no trees found, it was just gone, the stump was there. Nobody ever heard of * and different places * MR: Now, after this thing happened at Roswell, this recovery, did your security procedures change at all, was there any change at all in the , in what you did at the base? R: Our procedures didn't, no MR: No, nothing R: We didn't do anything. Just another day, because we would run into funny deals, and whatever it might be, and we would get all the information we could, and we would proceed with what we had to do. We had to brief the Base Commander once a week on any organization within a set radius from our base, we didn't hook up with another from Kirtland, come down so far, and each base come down so far. Everything that happened that was unusual, any group of people that was talking, or that had a big meeting or that had four or five or a dozen people got together, in a strange location, or somebody was *, what the heck was going on over at the place down on the river there, which, there's only water there some times in the year, but a group of people were down in there. Two or three days in their cars. They were curious. See, especially after this, this deal. (laughs). * out over there, see. Then we would

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MR: go down there? R: I would do it, if I went out. I covered certain parts of there, and then I would write it up and give it to Cav, and he would write up a report to headquarters. Everything went from our headquarters to Kirtland. And then to Washington, to our headquarters, not Andrews, but the Pentagon. A copy, if it pertained to some * or something like that, that happened in our area, * got a copy of it. * got a copy of it. and, he hated it with a purple passion, because some of them would discuss * about what he liked to keep around his office. He was always writing Kirtland to get permission to Albuquerque to destroy it, because his security people were having trouble keeping track of some of these reports. MR: Did you have to write a report on the incident? R: No. See, my MR: Do you think Cav, Cavitt did? R: Cavitt might have. but he would out there, see. He was the man in charge, and he was there MR: And would a copy of that report have been kept in your files in your office? R: Oh, good God, no. MR: Not even a copy R: Not even a copy. MR: Not even a copy. So the whole thing goes off to Kirtland. R: No, because we, our security setup, our paperwork, if we wrote anything like that, all copies, had to be out of there MR: So how would you refer back to something, if you had no copies of reports around? R: Well, all we'd have to do to, well, we had a * find, and I was with Doctor Lincoln La Paz, and *there was something about that deal, and * Cavitt would say he would know that, most of it was on our stationary. Rickett and Cavitt. And then, he'd talk about if he ever did. And, if he had to do it, it would just take us, call Albuquerque, and within 30 minutes there would be an airplane bringing us a copy of the * We wouldn't need it, see. Every now and then Colonel Reese or one of his boys would come down with a copy of the stuff. MR: Now let me ask you

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MR: Oh, you did keep confidential R: anything over confidential. Oh, yeah, background checks and all that. Oh, I'd say abut once every six months, he and I we'd get together, lay down all the file numbers and that, we would initial that these files had been destroyed by fire, and taken care of in the appropriate fashion. We used the same incinerator that Marcel used. MR: Now, let me ask you again about the fact that this was an atomic bomb unit R: * every type MR: Yeah, they must have been, I would think. They probably had atomic bombs on the base, I would think, or did they? Or is that still classified? R: (laughing) That's still classified. They, they had another type bomb that one day two tornadoes came in and played around out in the desert there about 75 miles. And the * up there called Fort Worth shook them up and tried to put a bug to drop an atomic bomb or some kind of bomb down on 'em to see what happened. * that airplane * damaged better than me. Better find a hole ***and then they would disappear. My boys were standing * see 'em. Come in and then it would go back, see. * Hit one of them dead center, just about the time he flew, * disappears. * We used to go on the 8 range at Alamogordo. And the CIC man was over there, too. After they dropped the thing away, had to make sure that the Army Air people, with the CICs, carried everything out of the way. * White Sands come under another jurisdiction. MR: do you know, was there a recovery plan in place? Let's say one of the planes had taken off from Roswell, and was carrying secret documents, or was carrying weapons of some type that were classified. Was there a plan in place that if that plane crashed, that there was a, OK here is what we got to do to recover it, seal the area? R: I wouldn't know anything about that MR: You wouldn't know anything about that R: Wherever it ditched, the reason we wouldn't know, * sure they did. To answer your question, yes. They did. But, we wouldn't know what it was. All we knew was they were prepared to alert the necessary people to carry the information *. Because they might say, he might call us out of the blue and say, look, we have a plane down, * what's the closest OSI to it. *we might know, we might not. Maybe, those boys, sometimes wait for 24 hours some times, refuel, * every major city in the United States. That is, by * MR: One thing that's always been puzzling us as we've thought about this case, is the fact that the story is out somewhat, here's what I mean. You know how, and yet it's still secret. It's out somewhat, you know, people like yourself are telling us a few things

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about it, and yet it's still secret. we don't know what happened. Now in the last twenty or thirty years, you know, secrecy in our government has become less than air tight, and you know all the instances of that, spies, and people releasing documents to Congress, all kinds of things. Even World War II secrets have come out now, Project Ultra, and all these things. But this event, still secret. That is, the people who really know what happened, aren't talking. You know. You were only on the periphery, I guess. And there must have been people in Washington who read La Paz's report, and they had an idea of what was happening. Why do you think that this event has been kept secret so well? R: Well, I always felt that they hadn't really solved the mystery of where they come from. Now, that's my theory. If La Paz was sitting right there where you are today he would probably tell you the same thing It's something unknown that you can't defend against. You can't build something, even today, we think that we know. The question is, * MR: What will happen, yeah R: * we know, in fifteen, twenty minutes, half of Russia will disappear. We know that

-end of tape-

Lewis Rickett

January 1990 – tape 2 side B

{R = Rickett, MR = Mark Rodeghier, * = unintelligible word or words}

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MR: …friendly, right? R: Yeah, they haven’t shown any outward signs MR: How did it make you feel back in 1947 when La Paz told you what you may have already suspected, that he thought this was an alien, you know, spacecraft? How did that make you feel, though? R: It certainly didn’t make me feel very good. He says well, you and I are in the same boat. He says, the thinking person, he says, if its true, what we think is, let’s pray as long as you and I live, and for generations to come, that they are real friendly. Evidently these are just probes. * all around * but he said, I would hope that my generation, your generation, generations to come, if they are indeed friendly, if they have, if they’re robots, he says what might happen is maybe one of those three he says, had control people in it. And the other two were probably flying here and take pictures and come on in making a sweep, see. Because we’d gotten sightings of these lights and things all over the world. Its not just in the United States. Of course, some of those things those people are kind of superstitious in those days and all, but we’ve had some pretty good scientists way back hundreds of years ago. If you don’t think so, he says, go over to England and check that Stonehenge place out. Whoever came up with that idea was no dummy. They all figured that out. But he says, this is coming into an *, so I don’t know if La Paz were alive today and at the same age he was then , he’d have a field day. MR: Oh, I would bet R: He’d be at NASA, he’d be, oh, he’d love it MR: You don’t mind talking about this to us, do you? You aren’t worried about talking about this event? R: I just don’t want to be quoted, by name MR: by name, sure, sure. But I mean that you don’t feel that you’re breaking some kind of security R: I can’t see it. It’s come out. MR: That it’s already come out, you mean R: If you published a book, and there would be other people probably that come up and say, here’s Jesse Marcel’s son. Now you see there. Only he was, a little bit too young then, I think, It’s kind of hard to fathom the meteorologist, metallargist, to this day would probably tell you there’s no metal that you couldn’t break down. If they’d broken it down, I’d think somebody ought to know about it. It’d be that right, it’s be that strong. So, you take a whole piece like that and you couldn’t even budge it either way.

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ME: Couldn’t move it at all R: It wouldn’t move. It just flat, it, like I told Joe Wirth, it looked like Monel, but I seen some Monel, Monel’s too heavy, I don’t think you’d get that thin, that could do that. He says, * our families, *you don’t want to tell that to anybody. (laughing) MR: Blanchard released this press release, and maybe he did it because he wasn’t thinking, but he doesn’t seem to have gotten into trouble, he rose up through the ranks, he did very well. Why do you think that, he made a big mistake, maybe, and then they had to correct it, and release a cover story. Why wouldn’t he get into trouble, why wouldn’t he be reprimanded? Or do you think he might have been secretly, or what if R: He probably got reprimanded for it. He got reprimanded couple of times I know of, but that was not one of them. MR: So, why wouldn’t they have reprimanded him for something like that, that would have been the worst thing he ever did, right? R: Probably was. But, he was a crack pilot, he was a good pilot, and he had a good reputation, and he was a great charmer. MR: Cause he rose up through the ranks R: And then he went on up. But, they had a guy who come in and replaced him. Full colonel. He was death on this cruise control, fuel consumption on the aircraft. Blanchard said, you can’t cut those things down, you can’t ;lean ‘em out. They won’t fly. He said, I can, too. He took over command, and grounded airplanes for the whole week. Every airplane for the whole, all the bombers, grounded for the whole week. And , he had the boys up there, all the pilots, ground crews, he tell them, it will fly just as good, just as safe, and we’ll save 25% fuel. And the engines * I believe in this cruise. I believe it so well that I have done it before. The Pentagon wants me to straighten this outfit out. And then *. He says, this is what we all are going to do. And he says, now believe me, some of you boys are going to spend some midnight oil reading What he did, was he took the first, he and his chief of staff was his copilot, I’ll fly it if you boys want to fly it with me. They said, well, if you’ve got nerve enough to do this, * he says, you certainly do, this is on ;your say. This is on my say. And before we left the ground you noticed I made a few changes on the engines. But he said yeah, it’ll definitely work. They said, we’ll see. They flew the same number of hours, * hours *, he says, after we land, we’ll put it up again, and I’ll tell you right now how much fuel we saved. And they didn’t believe it. But the word got out and the next morning everybody was * to get into the airplane. Within two, three weeks everybody was flying *. He was real good. We had a parade ground. When he took over, after he taught ‘em how to fly, he said, I’m going to do something else * my life. He says, I want a full dress parade. * He said, I want everybody on base out there. And he says, you’ve got some * here. He says, I know that. I just want her to be in the stands with me. * they were down there. He got down and he

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walks across (laughing) * some of those guys. Some of them had, some of the officers had different shades of khaki, like that, and regulations, said, regulation uniform. Some of them missed the word regulation. * and he says, pull your pants legs up. He had boots about that high. * He says, I am going to dismiss this formation. I want all officers over on the flight line in hangar one, immediately after this formation. Every else is secured for the day. He told them, dismissed for now. He took ‘em over, and he was telling me that, the Wing Commander said, boy, I’ll tell you, he went up one side of ‘em and down the other. He says, when I say regulation uniform I mean regulation uniform. Down to the darn shoestrings in your shoelaces. And your shoes. He says, right now, he says, it’s just before lunch. By three o’clock, I want you up there. Just you officers here in formation. In regulation uniform. (laughter) I’m telling you, I got called Cavitt called, everybody else called, some of them didn’t have it. Didn’t have enough to go around, and * was my size. MR: did they make it? R: He called me, and says, how about your uniform? I says, I got everything you need. * and I didn’t have any chevrons on my uniform, so he put it, says, just what I needed, it fits me to the tee. I’ll pass that inspection for sure! (laughter) MR: Now, Blanchard was very different form that. He didn’t care abut the niceties of the uniforms that much? R: No MR: Did you see him around? Well, when this thing happened, the Roswell Incident everybody calls it, did you see him around at all? The next day, or R: Yes, it’s going back, so many years, I’d see him every day. MR: But right when this happened R: I don’t remember seeing him. MR: You don’t remember seeing him. R: I just don’t remember. Could have been *. But there’s no reason for that to think there was anything out of the ordinary, see. * because I know that he was briefed on it. Real tight laced. And, but, that office, the headquarters for his was MR: How far was that? R: About from here to third avenue, * everything was down at that end * MR: Did , wait a minute, I lost my train of thought there. Did you ever hear any rumors about that they found bodies with this crash?

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R: (laughs) MR: I mean, at the time did you hear any rumors? R: I didn’t, I didn’t, I heard about that years later. MR: Years later, huh R: But I * MR: I know, it was covered up, right? R: No, and I discovered *. I heard about it, I might have heard about it while I was still there. Maybe shortly afterwards. It runs in my mind that I heard about it after I left Roswell. And, maybe not. It could have happened then. But I think that was a, everybody, it was a running joke, some old boy, this old cowboy * like that. And I was down at Bible’s. This Chambers boy was married to a girl, her name, her maiden name was Bible, and her father owned a pretty fair sized cotton patch down at a place called Artesia. And he raised watermelons in the corners. Just as a hobby, not to sell * cows, cows like watermelons, too. Yeah, and first time in my life ever what made me think about it was, the inside of the watermelon was yellow, the meat *, and he raised them, that way. And it was the kind of watermelon, I got some of the seeds one time and sent them back to my brother in law in Maryland. He said, they didn’t get very big, but they sure looked funny, but they tasted all right. But he said, he did try to keep them. And the soil there was wrong, too. But I know that we were, some people come up, you know, and wanted me to introduce them to these people. And they say, Oh! You’re from the base. And I says yeah. He says, you see any little green men, or something like that? It runs in my mind, that’s, what he made like that. And I says, * , like that. Oh, there was talk around the town, * MR: People were talking about it? But nobody knew, of course. R: They thought we wasn’t talking, that they knew what we did, and we weren’t talking, there wasn’t anything to it, and, where’d you hear that? Well, they’d say, so and so, my God, he’s a drunk, see, don’t believe him. And every now and then, on that, Unsolved Mysteries, MR: Yeah, they’re going to show that program again. R: I saw, I saw that. But it seems to me that a year or two ago I saw something, a special or something, MR: It was called UFO Coverup – Live. R: That must have been it.

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MR: About a year and a half ago R: A year and a half ago, and it was something, they were talking about that, about that little boy. Took him in it, or something like that? MR: Right, so, but you never met him, you know, so? R: didn’t even, no one ever talked to us, the only one we talked to was La Paz. The subject never come up and we never asked him because in the first place, he wouldn’t have believed us, and so we were keeping ourselves pretty interested of course. We would stop at night and La Paz would sit down at a table or something. Motels weren’t the best of motels. Several times, I say a number of times the, most jails have a apartment or something like that, when distant people come in MR: Visiting sheriff or something R: Visiting sheriff or a deputy, somebody else and they would have a place to stay and there wouldn’t be any motels out there, amount to anything like that. We’d stay there and he’d spend about an hour and a half writing up his notes and all that. And he says, you’re getting away with murder, you know. And I says, yeah. I says, I’ll have to do that. I’m going to approve your orders, or disapprove them. But, he was real nice, talking about his family, and talk about his work, said he wished he was a millionaire MR: don’t we all? (voice of Mrs. Rickett intrudes) MR: I think she’s back Mrs. Rickett: * the unfinished business MR: We’re still here Mrs. Rickett: Jeesh MR: How did it go with the doctor? Mrs. Rickett: I should have eavesdropped, and heard what I didn’t know. * she don’t know anything, but I told her what your research man said is wrong. I don’t know if she appreciated it or not. R: last night on the phone, he said that he…another doctor, I’m talking to a doctor about every other week if he has some information for her, give me the names of a couple doctors in this area that he would want her to see, and he says, that all the doctors so far, the first question says, it’s a kidney doctor *, and her blood right there, but she says, no.

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Mrs. Rickett: Here’s all your bills. * R: But anyhow, that was it MR: So you enjoyed your time with La Paz? R: Oh, Yeah, and sometimes the sheriff, might be in the sheriff’s office, or the chief of police, we’d get a meal here and there, you know. They were tickled to death to get somebody else in. Had something to talk about for the * MR: So you actually never went close to the crash site with La Paz? R: Oh, no. MR: You never went close to there, yeah, yeah R: Well, you couldn’t see anything. Cause MR: And he didn’t want to interview any of the ranchers around there, I guess? R: No, he says, you’ve covered this. He says, nobody here that would know anything. He says, that’s not what our job is. And we got up as far as Artesia, up in that neighborhood, and * MR: do you think that maybe Cavitt or someone else went and interviewed the ranchers around the crash site? R: I doubt it. MR: You doubt it. Yeah R: See, there were * were getting into a situation there, but I don’t believe it. There would be no reason. See, we would have gotten orders from our headquarters. The base commander had an investigation, and this was something that the base commander knew, he was dealing with it, and the MR: So if somebody interviewed them it would have been the intelligence people, Marcel R: Marcel, yes, it would be from Walker to Carswell MR: Upper, mixed level ones R: Roger Ramey there, and from here right straight to the Pentagon *

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MR: Now, do you think that Cavitt will ever talk to us? R: He just might, he might tell you he saw it, and there wasn’t very much of it, and it was funny, and it was different and that was that. He don’t know Joe Wirth. He might know Joe Wirth, I doubt he’d know Joe’s position. And Cav, now see, what bothers Cavitt, when he went to Walker, he made Major, and went to the Pentagon. And then he became chief of a section. Then he became chief of two sections. And first thing you know he had about a third of * and I never asked him that and he never talked about it. See, I had a chance to get in touch with him. It runs in my mind, she says no, but I think when I went back to school, in that December, 1959, that I went out to his house, or something. MR: Because he was in Washington R: Yeah. He was * like that MR: But you’re not sure R: Yeah, but I’m not sure about that. She thought, she thought it was out in California, but I think it was over there. See, that’s the way my mind is. I place him there. I don’t place him in California, but she keeps talking about. We were at, I was stationed at Sacramento. My brother was stationed at Hamilton, and so we would come down on a, on the way from Alaska, to MacDill , we came down from there. And, I just don’t. MR: So were you in the military for 20 years, or not quite, or R: Over twenty MR: Twenty, huh, you made your twenty R: Twenty and a half. I had six, seven years in the reserves MR: OK. I need to use the bathroom. Which way should I go? R: Up there, that way MR: This way. OK, I’ll find it. R: To your left, then a left. Right there, * to your right (Rickett and Mrs. Rickett talk about her medical problems. Rodeghier returns, discussion of acquaintance of Mrs. Rickett which is totally irrelevant. Recording ended by Rodeghier at this point.

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