textfiles/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2835.ufo

SUBJECT: CRASH AT EL INDIO                                   FILE: UFO2835



ARTICLE BY DENNIS STACY for OMNI


DID AN ALIEN CRAFT ATTEMPT TO LAND IN MEXICO?



Investigator: Dennis Stacy, journalist and editor of the MUFON UFO Journal, 
who has made three separate visits to Mexico in pursuit of this case during 
the past four years, most recently in September 1994. (Stacy's 
investigative aides include Tom Deuley, Formerly assigned to the National 
Security Agency and the administrative assistant to the Mutual UFO Network of 
Seguin, Texas, who accompanied Stacy on each of the three trips; Elia 
Maldonado of Guerrero, who served as translator; and Enrique Ceverra, former 
mayor of Guerrero.)

Cental Event: The alleged crash and subsequent recovery of a UFO by a top-
secret joint Mexican American military operation

Time: December 6, 1950

Place: Along the Texas Mexico border near the towns of El Indo, Texas, and 
Guerrero, Mexico

Ramifications: Aside from its own innate significance, the El Indo-Guerrero 
crash, it verified, would lend credence to those claiming an extraterrestrial 
or otherwise unconventional explanation for the famous Roswell crash, which 
occurred in New Mexico sometime in late June or early July 1947. It would also 
bolster the case for the much maligned MJ-12 documents, said to prove that 
government experts have been hot in pursuit of UFOs since the 1950s; most UFO 
researchers now regard these documents as a clever hoax or ingenious exercise 
in disinformation, with possible ties to the Air Force Office of Special 
Intelligence, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque.

Deep Background/The Roswell Connection: Something crashed to the earth near 
Roswel, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. The Army Air Force admitted as much 
in the form of a press release which first appeared in local newspapers on 
Tuesday July 8, 1947, and was widely reprinted around the world. "The many 
rumors regarding the flying discs became a reality yesterday." said the 
report, authorized by base commander Colonel William H. Blanchard, "when the 
intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell 
Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the 
cooperation of one of the local rancher and the sheriff's office of Chaves 
County."

Later that same afternoon, however, Eighth Air Force commander Brigadier 
General Roger Ramey called a press conference at Carswell Field, Fort Worth, 
Texas, to announce that what was really recovered was an ordinary weather 
balloon. During the intervening years, many UFO advocates pushed an 
extraterrestrial interpretation of the crash. And finally, on September 8, 
1994 in response to a General Accounting Office inquiry into Roswell launched 
by New Mexico Republican Congressman Steve Schiff, the Air Force attributed 
the original Roswell object to Project Mogul, a top-secret balloon project it 
said was designed to monitor Soviet nuclear bomb tests.

As we pursue the truth behind the El Indo story, our questions are straight 
forward. What, if anything, did happen on December 6, 1950, and how, if at 
all, was this possible event related to the crash at Roswell. Whatever the 
origin of the Roswell crash, is the incident reported at El Indio in some way 
related?

Deep Background/The MJ-12 Connection: The suggestion that a second UFO might 
have crashed and been retrieved by the same recovery team employed at Roswell 
first arrived anonymously in the mail at the home of Hollywood producer Jaime 
Shandera in December 1984. Postmarked Albuquerque, the package contained a 
single roll of undeveloped 35mm black and white film. When developed, the film 
revealed eight pages of what purported to be a top-secret report. Dated 
November 18, 1952, the report itself claimed to be a UFO briefing paper 
prepared by the outgoing Truman administration for the recently elected Dwight 
David Eisenhower. It described the creation of the Majestic-12 group, composed 
of 12 highlevel military and intelligence officials, along with civilian 
scientists, to oversee the investigation and analysis of the UFO phenomenon, 
and it even referred to the Roswell crash by name. What's more, the report 
referred to El Indio: "On 06 December 1950, a second object, probably of 
similar origin, impacted the earth at high speed in the El Indio Guerrero area 
of the Texas Mexico border after following a long trajectory through the 
atmosphere," the papers proclaimed. "By the time a search team arrived, what 
remained of the object had been almost totally incinerated. Such material as 
could be recovered was transported to the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) 
facility at Sandia, New Mexico, for further study."

The Air Force, along with most UFO researchers, has denounced the so-called 
MJ-12 papers as a hoax or a scam.

But bogus or not, we felt the reference to a crash along the Rio Grande 
between Texas and Mexico was worth looking into. Obviously, if the incident 
could be confirmed, then at least some of the content, if not the whole, of 
the MJ-12 document would be verified. Such verification would tend to support 
those claiming an extraterrestrial or unconventional explanation for Roswell, 
as well as charges, long made by some UFOlogists, of an ongoing government UFO 
cover-up.

By the same token, if the El Indio-Guerrero crash could be disproved, it would 
support the Air Force claim that the documents are indeed bogus and that the 
Roswell crash was just a weather balloon or something equally mundane.

Either way, investigating the El Indio report could help shed light on the 
anonymous author of any Majestic hoax. Who, after all, had even heard of El 
Indio (population less than 100) and Guerrero in any context? The former is so 
small that it isn't marked on most Texas highway maps.

Early Evidence for a Crash at El Indio: Shortly after the MJ-12 papers were 
first made public in 1987, Tom Deuley began a review of the case. One 
tantalizing clue came from nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, author of Crash 
at Corona, a book about Roswell. Friedman, virtually alone in the UFO 
community in his support of the MJ-12 papers, wielded the Freedom of 
Information Act to procure a previously classified communique from a field 
agent named Auerbach (first name not given) in Richmond, Virginia, to FBI 
director J. Edgar Hoover, dated December 3, 1950.

According to Auerbach, of the Counter Intelligence Corps, his office had been 
asked to stay attuned to "any data on flying saucers." Any information, the 
memo added, would be telephoned, immediately, to Air force Intelligence. 
Although the date was theoretically "wrong" for El Indio--December 3 instead 
of 6--the coincidence, if that's what it was, was intriguing.

The second piece of evidence was another declassified document found in the 
National Archives by Don Berliner, a board member of the Maryland-based Fund 
for UFO Research and co-author of the Corona book with Friedman. Previously 
stamped "Confidential," this six-paragraph memorandum for the Secretary of 
Defense from Colonel Charles B. winkle, assistant executive, directorate of 
plans, announced an air alert effective as of 1030 hours. According to Winkle, 
"The ConAC Air Defense Controller notified the Headquarters USAF Command Post 
that at 1030 hours a number of unidentified aircraft were approaching the 
northeast area of the United States and that there was no reason to believe 
the aircraft were friendly." By 1040 hours, 40 aircraft at an altitude of 
32,000 feet were confirmed by radar in the vicinity of Limestone, Maine. 
Winkle added that President Truman had been notified and interceptors 
scrambled. By 1104 hours, the situation was apparently defused. Winkle noted 
that "the original track had faded out, and it appears that the flight as 
originally identified is a friendly flight." The date was 6 December 1950.

Truman even mentioned the incident in his memoirs, not published until 1979. 
At the time, he noted in his diary, "It looks like World War III is here. I 
hope not--but we must meet whatever comes--and we will." Truman, however, 
attributed the radar returns and subsequent High Alert to an atmospheric 
disturbance.

Friedman found yet a third account of the incident in The Wise Men by 
historians Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 1986). An 
assessment of the role played by cold war warriors like then Secretary of 
State Dean Acheson and others, the book noted that on the same day--again, 
December 6, 1950--Acheson was informed that "a national emergency was about to 
be declared" because "there is flying over Alaska at the present moment a 
formation of Russian planes heading southeast." The British ambassador to the 
United States, Clement Attlee, was visiting at the time, and Acheson was 
instructed to notify him to "take whatever measures are proper for his 
safety." In the Isaacson and Thomas version, the threat evaporated when the 
incoming UFOs were reportedly identified as flocks of geese.

Despite the discrepancies--unidentified flying objects over Maine in one case, 
Alaska in the other--it is clear that the Air Force and government went into 
overdrive on December 6, 1950, the precise date given in the purportedly 
spurious MJ-12 papers for a flaming UFO crash in the vicinity of El Indio and 
Guerrero "after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere." As it 
turns out, whether tracked through Alaska or Maine, the El Indio crash does 
represent a long trajectory, indeed. Moreover, the top-secret documents 
suggest an anonymous MJ-12 hoaxer may have hit upon this particular day in 
history not by sheer serendipity, but rather by inside access to previously 
classified government reports.

But why had MJ-12 placed the crash near El Indio in the first place? What, if 
anything, did the author of the MJ-12 papers know or suspect that we did not? 
As we pondered the papers, both real and bogus, we realized our options had 
narrowed considerably. To learn more, we would have to travel to El Indio and 
Guerrero in person.

First On-Site Investigation (March 1990): El Indio over looks the Rio Grande 
separating Texas from Mexico, and lies some 160 miles southwest of San 
Antonio. The itinerary for our first visit, conducted in March 1990, was not 
overly ambitious. Mainly, Tom Deuley and I intended to scope out the lay of 
the land, interview a few longtime residents who may have had knowledge of 
nearly half-century-old events, and establish contacts for a more thorough 
follow-up investigation later on. If we mastered the intricacies of crossing 
international borders and actually contacting possible eyewitnesses in Mexico, 
so much the better.

We were both disappointed and encouraged by our initial foray into crashed 
saucer terrain. Through contacts in San Antonio, we acquired the names of Jack 
and Quixie Keisling, prominent local farmers who had lived in El Indio-since 
1939, a year after its establishment. Although they welcomed us into their 
home with typical Southern hospitality, they couldn't remember any significant 
event in the late 1949-early 1950 time frame that might have been associated 
with anything remotely resembling a flying saucer or crash.

"There was still a pilot training base in Eagle Pass after the end of the 
war," Jack volunteered, "and I could tell you some stories about that. The 
pilots used to love to buzz our pick-ups on the highway."

We also talked to the El Indio postmaster, Estelle Courtney, who had lived 
there since 1947, but she, too, was unable to shed any light on an alleged 
UFO, plane, or meteorite crash. Unfortunately, the widow of the town's 
original founder had died two weeks before we arrived.

We spent the night in Eagle Pass, 18 miles upriver, and crossed over into 
Mexico at Piedras Negras the next morning. Like El Indio, Guerrero (population 
2,000), some 35 miles back down the river and south of its sister city, had 
seen better days. Knowing my high school Spanish would confuse, rather than 
clarify, any interviews we might be able to conduct, we sought a translator. 
We were fortunate enough to secure the services of Elia Maldonado, who had 
just moved back to Guerrero from Green River. Wyoming, and would prove 
invaluable on our first visit as well as those to come. Maldonado was able to 
put us in touch with former mayor Enrique Ceverra, who in turn directed us to 
Rosendo Flores, a retired school teacher (now deceased) and, according to 
Ceverra, the town's acknowledged historian. "If anyone knows anything about 
such an incident, it will be him," Ceverra assured us.

Straight of spine if slow in step, Senor Flores invited us in his home two 
blocks off Guerrero's zocalo or main square, a welcome respite from the 
already beating sun. Underneath a full head of gray hair, sparkling dark eyes 
peered at us through thick glasses. Seated in a simple wooden chair in his 
living room, Flores answered our questions promptly and to the point. Not only 
did he remember such an incident, he had actually witnessed it. Shortly after 
siesta, he had been working on his family's land north of town, toward the 
river and El Indio, when "a ball of fire fell from the sky," crashing on the 
adjoining ranch and igniting a grass fire. A day or two later, a military 
contingent arrived from Piedras Negras, blocked off the area, and "hauled 
something away by truck." We asked him if American soldiers, norteamericanos, 
might have been involved, but Flores said he couldn't be certain. What about 
the object or objects hauled away: Could it have been as mundane as airplane 
wreckage? "We never knew," Flores answered. "No one told us anything." When we 
asked how he could be sure of the date, Flores simply said that "it was common 
knowledge, everyone knew about it." The old gentleman even gave us the name of 
the landowners and the location where the "fireball" had impacted--El Rancho 
del Griegos (the Ranch of the Greeks). BEfore leaving, we asked if anyone had 
ever visited him previously about this incident. His reply was adamant and 
economical. "No, never. You are the first."

Buoyed by Flores' account, we sought out the people named but none was home. 
We spent the remainder of the day driving backroads bordering the ranch--
Deuley's hand written notes at the time refer to them as "stone washboards"--
in search of other potential eyewitnesses, only to learn that many had long 
since died or moved away.

Indeed, as we delved deeper, we were unable to turn up any additional 
eyewitnesses to corroborate Flores' account. If a flying disc had crashed near 
Guerrero on December 6, 1950, it certainly hadn't insinuated itself into the 
local memory in the way flores had suggested.

Still, we felt the case was worth a second visit: We had by no means 
interviewed everyone who might have remembered the incident, and we had not 
yet seen the alleged crash site. Maldonado and Ceverra agreed to assist us 
further by continuing to ask questions locally and trying to arrange access to 
the Ranch of the Greeks.

Second Journey Out (November 1990): In the first week of November 1990, we 
returned to Mexico, having decided to concentrate our investigation in the 
Guerrero area. Ceverra learned that the original ranch had since been 
subdivided and sold, but he had contacted the new owners, who wish to remain 
anonymous, and obtained permission to search their property. He had also 
contacted two individuals who, while they had no knowledge of any fireball or 
other crash in the area, did know of a "mystery hole" on the ranch that had 
appeared sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s as portions of the land 
were first cleared of Mesquite and scrub brush for cultivation. At one point 
the hole had been large enough to trap a tractor, which had to be winched out. 
We chose to return in November, after the field had been harvested, 
facilitating our search.

In the meantime, Ceverra also contacted two of the four children whose parents 
had owned the land in December 1950. Both were of little help, alas, since 
they'd been younger than 10 at the time.

After we arrived in Guerrero, Ceverra arranged a guide, a young man with his 
leg in a cast who worked the ranch and would be able to lead us to the e hole 
in the field. As with everyone else we talked to on this occasion, he had no 
idea how the hole had appeared, only that it had been there as long as he 
could remember, its only direct connection to the alleged crash, then, as best 
we could determine, was that it lay in the same immediate vicinity where 
Flores had told us the fireball had come down more than 40 years before.

An afternoon spent searching the field proved hot, fruitless work. Unable to 
walk because of his injury, our guide could only give us general directions. 
And while the last crop had been cleared, the soft, loamy soil had quickly 
sprung up in weeds and grasses. Coupled with the flatness of the terrain, this 
meant that one part of the large field looked pretty much like another. As the 
day wore on, however, word leaked out that we were looking for a "UFO hole," 
and we soon drew a crowd of curious locals, all of whom were perfectly willing 
to help out. At one stage, we had some 15 people in the field, separated by 
outstretched arms, walking up and down the weed-grown rows, all for naught 
except a video of the event taken by our photographer, Steve Lewis.

It's no wonder that both Deuley and I were feeling a little foolish. In fact, 
with sweat pooling in my armpits, I couldn't help but hum the words of an old 
Grateful Dead song: "What a long, strange trip it's been!" We had started out 
with a single reference to a crashed flying saucer in what in all likelihood 
was a bogus "government" document, we had located but a single eyewitness to 
an event of ultimately unknown nature, and yet here we were, stirring up dust 
in a field on the south bank of the Rio Grande, looking for a mystery hole of 
equally unknown origin, and with no incontrovertible evidence that the two 
events were connected by anything other than coincidence.

We thanked Maldonado and Ceverra for their gracious assistance, but advised we 
probably wouldn't return unless there were any new dramatic developments on 
either side of the border. Back in San Antonio, we continued to accumulate 
data in hopes some of it might prove relevant. The MJ-12 documents aside, we 
continued to hear rumor of some UFO crash along the Texas-Mexico border during 
our targeted time frame. Unfortunately, these waters were muddied by known 
hoaxes, including the so-called "Tomato Man" case involving photographs of an 
alleged fried "alien" inside burned-out "spaceship" said to have crashed near 
Rio Sabinas, Mexico, on July 7, 1948, some 130 miles south of Guerrero. The 
photos were later demonstrated to be of a human accident victim, the head 
having swollen and bubbled from the intense heat so as to resemble a giant, 
mutant tomato. Another unsubstantiated story in circulation had a UFO crashing 
in 1950, but 30 miles northwest of Del Rio on the Rio Grande, a good 100 miles 
north of Guerrero. We were still intrigued by the prospect, however remote, 
that all such stories had some common root, perhaps indicative of a real 
event, mundane or otherwise.

Another Long Strange Trip (September 1994): Last year, at the behest of 
Project Open Book, we undertook a third trip to Guerrero with the intention of 
laying the case to rest one way or the other: as a legitimate UFO incident, an 
example of runaway folklore, or some other as-yet-unidentified third category. 
This time we were accompanied by two other UFOlogists who had recently taken 
an interest in the case: Hal Landrum, an Eagle Pass attorney, and John Yates 
fo Fort Worth, a salesman for The Psychological Corporation. Landrum had 
earlier visited Guerrero on his own, and as for Yates, he brought his metal 
detector. We informed Maldonado of our impending arrival. She, inturn, told 
Ceverra, who by now had located a former ranch foreman. Jose Garcia, who said 
he could take us straight to the mystery hole.

It took awhile, but Garcia ultimately delivered a shallow depression in the 
same field we had searched in November 1990. Hairline cracks in the soil 
around the small circular depression indicated an original diameter of some 20 
feet. Yet a search with the metal detector revealed nothing, not even the 
usual beer bottle caps and soft drink pull-tabs one normally encounters in 
such situations. While we hadn't expected a perfectly preserved crater with 
still-smoking rim and flying saucer parts strewn about, we had hoped to be 
able to tie the hole to a particular place in time. Like others we had 
interviewed, Garcia could add nothing in this regard.

Our own assessment of the situation was that we were looking at a natural 
sink-hole phenomenon, probably attributable to the porous limestone underlying 
the Rio Grande deposited silt on which we stood. As we left, in fact, we 
encountered several active wash-outs alongside the dirt road encircling the 
field, one of which could have swallowed a compact car easily.

Moreover, after interviewing more than 40 additional people on both sides of 
the border, we were unable to directly connect the hole in the field with the 
fireball described by Flores. Nor were we able to identify any additional 
witnesses to the fall of the fireball itself.

Tom Deuley may have put it best when he said, "I think we've triggered some 
sort of investigator effect. We ride into town and start asking questions 
about unusual events, and the people do their best to help out. We ask about 
UFOs and crash sites, and without necessarily making up anything, they show us 
the best they have. But every community probably has something 'strange' in 
its history. It doesn't necessarily mean that a UFO crashed nearby."

Ultimately, another avenue of investigation bore fruit. While researching the 
history of the area in general, we were directed to two retired historians now 
living in Fort Clark Springs, Texas. Neither had encountered UFO stories in 
their years spent up and down the Rio Grande, but one of them, Ben Pingenot, 
did remember that a plane crash had taken place in the area. The source he 
gave Landrum was Wings Over the Mexican Border: Pioneer Military Aviation in 
the Big Bend, by Kenneth Baxter Ragsdale, University of Texas Press, 1984.

On January 16, 1944, according to Ragsdale, a Civil Air Patrol Stinson spotter 
plane had crashed seven miles from Guerrero, killing Lieutenants Harry Hewitt 
and Bayard Henderson. Aside from a brief mention in the Laredo Times, the 
incident was promptly hushed up for reasons that can only now be guessed. The 
international nature of the accident was probably one factor. Another, 
stronger reason for a cover-up is the suggestion that the Stinson was the 
victim of friendly fire--"a gunnery school accident"--from what Ragsdale was 
able to learn. And, indeed, a restricted gunnery range zone is still marked on 
aeronautical maps of the area, stretching southeastward along the American 
side of the border from El Indio.

Some sort of joint Mexican-American military cooperation would almost 
assuredly have been involved in the recovery of the bodies and any surviving 
wreckage, arguably triggering the inevitable bureaucratic tendency toward 
secrecy. Hewitt's widow was unable to obtain a cause of death from the 
authorities and was only granted survivors benefits after the Oregon 
legislature introduced a bill to that effect in Congress.

As for the ultimate cause of the crash, Ragsdale concluded, "the facts will 
probably never be known. The military keeps its secrets well."

Conclusions: Sadly, we may never know beyond reasonable doubt whether or not 
an extraterrestrial object slammed to earth near Guerrero in December 1950. We 
do know, though, that an indisputably real terrestrial object impacted within 
seven miles of the very same Mexican town in January 1944. Could this have 
been the event, witnessed by a much-younger Rosendo Flores, before his memory 
of specific dates became blurred by the passage of time? If so, it's 
conceivable, depending on who was talked to and how the questions were 
phrased, that the crash of the Civil Air Patrol plane and its military 
retrieval could have given rise to all sorts of UFO rumors along the Rio 
Grande. In the end it's impossible to prove a negative--that a UFO didn't 
crash near Guerrero, Mexico, in December 1950. One might just as well search 
for the proverbial needle in the haystack--or a hole in the ground.



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