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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