A Different Perspective

I thought that I would expand on this disagreement about what Barry Goldwater (seen here)knew and what he said about UFOs and the possibility of a crash outside of Roswell. I published a copy of the letter that Goldwater had sent to Kent Jeffrey in which Goldwater mentioned the Roswell case. Skeptics believe, and I’m not sure they’re incorrect, that Goldwater assumed that the Roswell debris was housed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base but he didn’t know.

Let me take a moment to explain that. Kent’s letter was from 1994, after Roswell had entered the national psyche. Jeffrey had asked about the Roswell case, so we can draw no specific conclusion from this, other than the answer might have been tainted by either the information in general circulation or by the specific questions asked by Jeffrey.

To continue in that vein, we know that in 1994, in an interview conducted by Larry King and broadcast on CNN, Goldwater said, "I think at Wright-Patterson, if you could get into certain places, you’d find out what the Air Force and the government does know about UFOs. Reportedly, a spaceship landed. It was all hushed up. I called Curtis LeMay and I said, ‘General, I know we have a room at Wright-Patterson where you put all this secret stuff. Could I go in there?’ I’ve never heard General LeMay get mad, but he got madder than hell at me, cussed me out, and said, ‘Don’t ever ask me that question again!’

While this quote does little to confirm the crash at Roswell, and it was conducted in 1994, it does establish that Goldwater asked LeMay about the "Blue Room" as it has come to be known, and that LeMay "cussed him out." Remember, some skeptics (okay, CDA specifically), had questioned this part of the story.

So, it proves that LeMay was capable of "cussing out" a friend and a United States senator. This would suggest that the topic discussed, and here we know that it was UFOs and the "landing" of a spaceship. This would suggest that there was a point that friendship ended and LeMay was talking to Goldwater as a superior officer to a subordinate.

There is another quote, this one from the April 25, 1988 issue of the New Yorker, that is also interesting because it predates the explosion of Roswell information. True, Charles Berlitz and Bill Moore’s The Roswell Incident had been published, but its circulation was limited to those interested in UFOs and its importance to the outside world was confined to UFO enthusiasts.

In a web search I did find a couple of spots where it was reported that Goldwater had said that when he asked LeMay he was told, "Not only no but hell no. And if you ever ask again I’ll have you court martialed." I was unable to establish an original source for this, but I remember seeing it printed in one of the tabloids.

Yes, I know that’s not a good source, but they published a copy of the letter in which Goldwater made the statement. I have not found my copy of that. I saw it a number of years ago.

So, where does this leave us? Well, we have multiple sources which quote Goldwater (including letters he wrote himself) referring to the Roswell case specifically and to a UFO landing generally. We have him talking about it being highly classified, so high classified in fact that he could not gain access as either a United States senator or an Air Force major general. And he confirmed in those sources (I’m thinking the New Yorker and the Larry King broadcast would be hard to dispute) that LeMay cussed him out.

The only thing we can’t establish is if this referred to the Roswell UFO crash. It certainly suggests that there are some highly classified secrets out there that deal with UFOs and some sort of physical evidence from them. It also opens the door for the Roswell case... Goldwater did use Roswell in his later communications.

We also see some of the interesting dynamics at work here. LeMay, as a general (meaning four stars) read the Riot Act to his subordinate, a major general (meaning two stars). He made it clear that the major general would not be allowed to refer the material. Friendship, on this point, did not matter.

Had Goldwater attempted to do an end run by using his power as a senator, he would have had no more luck than he had as a major general. Powerful though he was as a senator, that simply didn’t open the door into this highly classified arena. Goldwater had the grace, and the intelligence, not to push it farther. He knew that was important enough to be kept secret and the moment that one senator was brought in, then others would want to know and at that point the secret was out.

Contrary to what the skeptics say, the situation has been established with a proper documented record. We know the story of Goldwater and LeMay is true, and, according to Goldwater, it concerned UFOs. What we don’t know is if it related directly to Roswell. I suspect it does, and Goldwater suspected it did, but that just doesn’t get us to the end.