Unfortunately, leanin' H, it is James Carlson who is being deceptive, but you could not be expected to know about
his track record. Google my name and see what the vast majority of people say about the credibility of my work. Then Google James' name and see what most folks say about him.
James says that I misrepresent my ex-military sources' comments about UFOs. If that is so, why have they sworn out legal affidavits attesting to UFO activity at nuclear missile sites, just as I have portrayed in my lectures and my book? Those written affidavits and the witnesses' own verbal statements will be presented at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on September 27, 2010. Three of the eight former or retired Air Force personnel who will participate are colonels or lieutenent colonels. They will confirm that UFOs have hovered over ICBM sites just moments before those missiles malfunctioned. There will be a lot of publicity surrounding the event and I will update those posting here once the press conference has taken place.
Now, to the subject of cattle mutilations. Since James will do his thing on this forum and continue to misstate facts, I will simply ask those ranchers who have experienced mutilations to contact me privately at
[email protected]. I won't waste my time responding to James' version of reality.
I will now post most of my book's chapter on the subject of mutilations and trust that interested parties will investigate the sources I cite to verify that I have accurately reported what I and other researchers have been told by ranchers, law enforcement officers and ex-USAF personnel.
From the book
UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites:
~ Chapter 19 ~
Mutilations
Over the last four decades, thousands of gruesomely mutilated cattle have been found throughout the United States. Most of these still-unexplained incidents occurred—and continue to occur—in the Rocky Mountain states, primarily New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. However, the overall distribution of cases has been widespread, with cattle or other livestock mutilations being reported in most of the 48 contiguous states.
Moreover, hundreds, if not thousands of other cases have occurred around the world, notably in Argentina, where cattle ranches abound. Numerous theories have been advanced to account for these bizarre incidents, including Satanic cult rites, secret government experiments, and the sampling by space aliens of residual radiation or environmental toxins. Not surprisingly, skeptics have dismissed the mutilations as ordinary predator kills, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
While uninformed speculation about this grisly phenomenon runs rife, a handful of researchers, law enforcement officers and livestock inspectors have methodically investigated hundreds of mutilation cases and collected a wealth of forensic data. Although the physical evidence found at the "crime scene" varies from case to case, common mutilation traits include the surgically-precise removal of the animal's facial hide and flesh, usually only on one side, as well as the removal of one eyeball and the tongue. Udders and genitalia are almost always excised and, in virtually every case, the rectal area has been cored-out in a near-perfect circle, and the tissue removed. The resulting cylinder-shaped cavity extends several inches into the body.
Additionally, there is almost always a complete absence of blood in the carcass and none to be found on the ground nearby. With rare exceptions, human footprints, tire tracks, and helicopter skid marks are never in evidence, suggesting that the cattle are mutilated at one location and air-dropped at another.
On more than one occasion, the mutilated animal has been found on snow-covered terrain. Coyote tracks indicate that one or more of the scavengers had approached but stopped short of the animal, as if some unseen barrier was present. The tracks then warily veer off to one side or the other, tracing a wide arc around the carcass, before leaving the area altogether. This is very strange, almost unheard of behavior for a hungry coyote in winter. Some investigators also report that even birds of prey will not scavenge a mutilated animal.
Significantly, in many mutilation cases, ranchers report seeing unusual aerial lights maneuvering over their property, most often on the night prior to the discovery of the dead animal. These move erratically and sometimes hover, and are usually described as appearing much different than aircraft lights, being far brighter and more diffuse. Most of the time, they are accompanied by no discernable noise but, in some instances, helicopter-like sounds are heard. In other cases, ranchers report observing black, unmarked helicopters flying low during daylight—as if searching for something—only hours after the mutilated animal is found. In still other cases, sightings are reported of mysterious helicopters and UFOs.
As noted in the last chapter, during the summer and fall of 1975, several dozen mutilated cattle were found within the nuclear missile field surrounding Malmstrom AFB, Montana—some of them quite near various Minuteman missile launch facilities. In 1993, I interviewed a local ranching couple—they've requested anonymity—who told me they had once discovered a mutilated cow sprawled inside the 10-foot-high security fence surrounding the Minuteman LF located on their property. Someone had apparently air-dropped the carcass nearly on top of the heavy steel and concrete lid covering the underground missile silo! Was the animal perhaps a morbid calling card? If so, who had placed it there, and what would such an act signify?
Between 1975 and 1977, mutilated cattle were also discovered within F.E. Warren AFB's missile field, located northeast of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and extending into the adjoining states of Colorado and Nebraska. One former USAF missile squadron commander stationed there during that era, retired Lt.Col. Philip Moore, told me, "There was a rash of cattle mutilations in northeastern Colorado—in the midst of the 321st Strategic Missile Squadron's missile field—during the first few years I was at F.E. Warren, in the early to mid '70s. The news accounts made many of them sound mysterious. I was the Commander of that squadron in the late '70s and by then the mutilations had stopped. As far as I know, they stayed mysterious and were never solved."
Big Mama
These incidents, and others in the region, had been widely covered by the local and, occasionally, national media. One article by Bob Pratt, published by the MUFON UFO Journal, reported that in Colorado's Logan County alone, 77 mutilations were found between August 1975 and August 1977. Nearly half of the county falls within F.E. Warren's huge missile field. Pratt wrote in part:
Logan County had a fairly heavy toll, with mysterious lights in the sky—dubbed 'Big Mama and the baby UFOs'—often being reported. 'There is a very definite connection between the lights and the mutilations because each time we've had the mutilations the lights have been seen,' Harry L. 'Tex' Graves, then sheriff of Logan County, told me in an interview in his office in Sterling.
Big Mama...'looked like a huge brilliant star that would sit in one spot in the sky for 10 minutes to an hour and a half and then suddenly disappear at great speed. Sometimes small lights would appear to drop out of Big Mama and then shoot off horizontally and disappear in several seconds. Sometimes, after the little ones drop down, you can look down [toward] the ground and see one, two, three little ones down around there. When the little ones get done with whatever they're doing, then they join up with the big one and they disappear.'
Graves said the object definitely moved across the sky, sometimes hanging motionless for awhile and then moving away very rapidly...Deputy Bob Stone described Big Mama as 'a big, huge white light. Through the telescope, it looks just like a huge circle...' 1
Another retrospective newspaper article, published in 1977 by the Colorado Springs
Gazette Telegraph, also profiled Sheriff Graves, who had by then investigated dozens of the mutilations. The article, "An Unknown Menace Puzzles Cattlemen", quoted Graves as saying, "It's the strangest thing I've seen in 24 years as a lawman, and I'm not about to give up...I still don't know who is responsible for these crimes, but one thing is certain—whoever or whatever they are, they're nothing but a bunch of common thieves." 2
The article noted that the nationwide mutilation wave began late in 1974, peaking during the summer months of 1975 and 1976. Although several states were affected, Colorado had been hardest-hit, with the Colorado Cattlemen's Association reporting 1,500 suspected cases.
Unable to solve the mystery, Tex Graves and other county sheriffs sought help from Colorado Governor Richard Lamm who, in turn, ordered the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to conduct a criminal investigation of the mutilations. Lamm also ordered the Colorado National Guard to assist the CBI, tasking it with monitoring any unusual aircraft or helicopter activity over the state's ranch lands. Additionally, tissue samples from the mutilated cattle were to be sent to forensic laboratories operated by Colorado State University.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Graves, together with his deputies and sometimes concerned ranchers, spent many a night staked out in remote areas of Logan County, in the hope of catching the perpetrators literally red-handed. Unfortunately, those efforts were to no avail.
Finally, after a nearly three-month investigation, the CBI announced that the so-called mutilations were mostly the result of natural predator activity, with only a few cases attributable to human slayers. This surprising conclusion was quickly supported by the analysts working at Colorado State University, who found that of some 300 cases studied, only nine or 10 showed evidence of human involvement.
This official announcement stunned and outraged law enforcement personnel and ranchers throughout the state. Most considered the conclusions to be preposterous. As a result, many cops and cattlemen stopped listening to the "experts" and quit sending tissue samples to the CSU laboratories.
The
Gazette Telegraph article summarized Sheriff Tex Graves' own indignant reaction this way:
In the corner of his office in Sterling is a metal file cabinet. In one of the well-used drawers are more than 200 photographs of mutilated cattle, and they are damning evidence that the state investigators either didn't know what they were saying or were not telling the whole story.
'Look at these pictures and then tell me how anyone can blame it on natural predators,' Graves urges, 'I'd like to see the coyote that can do that! Predators are never as selective as the mutilators,' Graves says, 'A coyote wouldn't leave all the tender parts, if he tore a piece of hide from the critter's belly, he'd leave it around, not take it with him. And he'd go after the meat under it. At least three of the 74 animals mutilated in Logan County were cut upon while they were still alive, based on the evidence we've collected,' he continues, 'Also, the blood in 29 animals was completely drained from the animal. Yet we seldom find much blood on the ground.' 3
Clearly, Sheriff Graves was completely unconvinced by the official findings. The newspaper article concluded, "During the summer of 1977, the number of reported mutilations in Colorado decreased drastically. In Logan County, only five were reported." This statement essentially confirms USAF Lt.Col. Philip Moore's recollection that the mutilations had ceased in F.E. Warren's missile field by the time he took command of the 321st Strategic Missile Squadron in the late 1970s.
Meanwhile, during the same mid-1970s period, other mutilations were occurring in South Dakota, many of them within the boundaries of the Minuteman missile field operated by Ellsworth AFB. At the time, civilians Bill and Martha Patterson owned a ranch and small general store about seven miles south of Mud Butte, not far from one of the missile launch facilities in Ellsworth's Foxtrot Flight. On two occasions, I was told, the Pattersons had found mutilated cattle on their property and, a short time later, a mutilated calf was found on a neighbor's ranch. These incidents were reported to the Meade County Sheriff's Office, but no further action was taken.
But the mutilation activity was only part of the story. On a number of occasions, the Pattersons saw strange lights flying near, and sometimes hovering above, Minuteman Launch Facility F-09, located about a mile from their house. One night in particular, Bill saw a brightly-lit, disc-shaped UFO maneuvering in the western sky, just after sunset. It made no noise, but the Patterson's dogs had barked furiously until the object faded from view. As with most of the other sightings, Bill reported the incident to Ellsworth, but received no feedback from the Air Force.
On another occasion, a missile security "strike team" leader had knocked on their door and asked to borrow their binoculars to look at some bright lights maneuvering in the sky near the launch facility. As he did so, the airman commented that radar at the base had detected an object above the LF, and the missile command post had ordered his team to investigate. After he returned the binoculars, the strike team leader left quickly without comment.
Two Moons Rising
Over the years, I have interviewed several law enforcement officers in New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho and Montana, who, collectively, had been involved in hundreds of cattle mutilation investigations. Some of them were state policemen at the time, but most were county sheriffs. Their unanimous opinion is that none of those cases could be attributed to natural predator kills, given the nature of the wounds found on the carcasses. Coyotes simply do not chew perfectly circular cores into flesh. Moreover, as noted earlier, scavengers of all types actually appeared to avoid the mutilated animals.
Furthermore, almost all of the cops I spoke with are equally adamant that not a single case they investigated could be linked to human activities—from a forensic, crime-scene point-of-view. One notable exception is now-retired New Mexico State Policeman Gabe Valdez, who found incriminating evidence of apparent government involvement at some of the mutilation scenes. At Valdez' request, I am not at liberty to discuss these finds.
As for the rest of the investigators, they are absolutely convinced that neither government agencies, nor Satan worshipers, nor pranksters, nor publicity seekers, nor sadists are responsible for the cattle killings. One retired county sheriff in Montana, Keith Wolverton, did concede the possibility that unknown persons flying in the infamous black helicopters may have lassoed the unfortunate beasts, hauled them elsewhere for strange slaughter, before returning them to their owners' pastures. However, after proposing this scenario, he quickly said that he considered it to be highly unlikely.
On the other hand, all of the law enforcement personnel I spoke with—including Valdez—would not rule out UFO involvement in at least some of the mutilations. In fact, many of the cops, including Wolverton and Valdez, had seen UFOs themselves at one time or another.
One such sighting in particular was rather remarkable, and appeared to have a strong circumstantial link to a cow mutilation. During a 1988 interview with Las Animas County (Colorado) Sheriff Lou Girodo, he told me of especially intriguing mutilation case which had occurred years earlier.
It was not so much the details of the field investigation itself that were interesting, but the events that followed it. The mutilated cow, found by a rancher in the southern part of the county, displayed most of the classic incisions associated with these incidents. With dusk fast approaching, Girodo and a deputy sheriff completed their examination of the animal and were just driving away when they both spotted what they assumed to be the orange-tinged full moon rising from behind a nearby hill. After a few moments, the "moon" split into two identical round, bright orange objects. One of them immediately raced away at high velocity, parallel to the horizon, while the other object slowly descended and disappeared behind the hill. Unsettled, the sheriff and his deputy kept on driving. Said Girodo, "Even years later, if I mentioned the incident to my deputy, he would become upset and not want to talk about it." In any case, Girodo assumes there was a link between the mutilated cow and the unknown aerial objects.
The Rommel Report
(Hint: Really hungry coyotes)
In 1979, an ex-FBI agent, Kenneth Rommel, was chosen to direct an investigation into the mutilations being conducted by the district attorney's office of New Mexico's First Judicial District. The inquiry, dubbed "Operational Animal Mutilation," was funded with a grant from the U.S. Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Rommel's 28-year career with the FBI included counter-intelligence work, among other assignments; he also investigated bank robberies. How this particular background qualified Rommel for animal mutilation sleuthing is unclear to me.
One article I discovered online, written by a mutilation skeptic, speaks glowingly of Rommel's report, saying it was, "heavily documented, and draws on the expertise of dozens of specialists consulted during the investigation, including: reporters, veterinarians, livestock association officials, paranormal investigators, geologists, chemists, forensic pathologists, pharmacologists, and county, state and federal officials from agriculture, wildlife and law enforcement agencies." 4
Uh, ranchers? Did anybody think to ask the cattle ranchers about the mutilations? Or about their sightings of strange, silent aerial lights which hovered and flew erratically over their property just hours before their livestock turned up sliced and diced? Apparently not. If such interviews were conducted, their import was conspicuously absent in the Rommel Report's conclusions.
The skeptical article mentioned above further notes that Rommel had "personally inspected the carcasses of 25 reported mutes. In each of these incidents, he reported, 'the rough jagged nature of the incisions, together with the evidence at the scene, clearly indicates that the carcass was damaged by predators and/or scavengers.' He [went] on to say that 'I have found no credible source who differs from this finding, nor has one piece of hard evidence been presented or uncovered that would cause me to alter this conclusion.'" 5
Given this unequivocally dismissive conclusion, it is not surprising that New Mexico State Policeman Gabe Valdez, and Sheriffs Tex Graves, Lou Girodo and Keith Wolverton—as well as several other law enforcement officers who have collectively investigated hundreds of mutilation cases—completely disagree with Rommel's findings. Apparently, these were not the type of qualified specialists—"credible sources"—from whom Mr. Rommel wished to take testimony, or even take seriously. (I will not quote here the derisive, sarcastic, off-the-record comments all of these persons made to me when I brought up the Rommel investigation during my interviews with them.)
For his part, Rommel does not conceal his own contempt toward the many ranchers and law enforcement personnel who have dismissed his findings. The above-referenced article quotes him as saying, "The problem is, you've got ranchers who see something they've never seen before or just ignored, and then you have law-enforcement officials getting carried away. You've got Sheriff Num-nutz up in some place where he can't even find his own police car, saying, 'It looks like laser surgery,' and the reporters love quotes like that, so they repeat it. Now, if I were a reporter, I would ask, 'Sheriff, how much do you know about laser surgery?'" 6
Well, Mr. Rommel, among the many cops I have personally interviewed over the years, not one has mentioned laser surgery—or confessed to his inability to locate his police cruiser. However, almost all of them have mentioned finding compelling forensic evidence, in case after case, which conclusively ruled-out predator involvement in the cattle mutilation kills they've investigated.
(I will also take this opportunity to mention that the FBI's crime lab was once embroiled in a high-profile scandal relating to its shockingly shoddy, often invalid forensic work, which jeopardized hundreds of criminal cases. According to the Chicago Tribune, "In the mid-1990s, a lab whistle-blower touched off a broad inquiry over allegations of improper handling of evidence. It led to the firing of several lab officials and the overhaul of protocols and procedures. In May of this year [2004], an FBI analyst, Jacqueline Blake, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making false statements about following protocol in some 100 DNA analysis reports." 7 )
So, retired FBI Special Agent Rommel, I am curious: In the course of your cattle mutilation investigations, did you ever send any of your field samples to the FBI lab for analysis? Regardless, do you have anything to say about the Num-nutz at the lab mentioned in the article above?
Law enforcement personnel aside, among the ranchers with whom I've spoken, many have mentioned seeing silent, high-velocity, often acrobatic UFOs just hours before a mutilation find. Now, if I were a reporter, I would ask, "Agent Rommel, how much do you know about UFOs, to dismiss them so casually?"
Anyway, uninformed skeptics love the Rommel Report, touting it as definitive. One even lauded Rommel as "one of the towering figures" in mutilation research.8 However, nearly all of those same persons have never interviewed Gabe Valdez, Tex Graves, et al., not to mention the ranchers who have worked with cattle all of their lives, and who know predator kills when they see them. In short, the real, on-the-scene cattle mutilation experts continue to be ignored by the self-appointed experts sitting in their armchairs. Nevertheless, as with many of the other subjects examined in this book, an unbiased investigation of the cattle mutilation phenomenon—one incorporating genuine expert testimony—reveals a much more complex and still-unexplained mystery, and one not involving hungry coyotes.
Now, a Really Ominous Theory
A far more worrisome theory, published by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), suggests that cattle "mutilations" are the work of helicopter-borne government scientists who are covertly investigating periodic outbreaks of the devastating, viral-originated animal disease, Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE), which could potentially adversely impact human's food supply. The NIDS report, released in 2003, states, "The primary conclusion of this paper is that the animal mutilation epidemic of 1970-2003 was and is a monitoring operation for an infectious agent that is spreading through the human food chain...The infectious agent, unlike all known viruses and bacteria, is almost indestructible and the symptoms in people appear very difficult to diagnose pre-mortem." 9
Therefore, this alarming theory concludes, the U.S. government investigators' unauthorized, clandestine approach to livestock harvesting is designed to prevent public panic while the scientific data continue to be collected. If the NIDS study is on the right track, the TSE epidemic scenario obviously has potentially devastating consequences for some number of the billions of humans who have eaten meat over the last few decades.
However, even if one assumes that the conclusions of the NIDS study have merit, is it not possible that those aboard the UFOs are also aware of the potentially ominous situation and are, therefore, engaged in their own, ongoing livestock-sampling operation—to assess the potential for a viral-related food crisis affecting humans?
Regardless, I think one can reasonably conclude that government operatives in unmarked helicopters could have had no association with "Big Mama" and her brood, or the numerous other seemingly bona fide UFOs sighted at mutilation sites over the years. According to Gabe Valdez, Howard Burgess once found a significant distortion in the local magnetic field near a mutilated cow on Manuel Gomez' ranch. How could a secret group of government-sponsored mutilators created something like that?!
Furthermore, if one proposes that the mutilations are exclusively the work of human perpetrators, how is it possible that, over a four-decade period, not even one of them has ever been caught? Is there any other type of crime in human history, large or small, where this has been the case?
And what of the many mutilations which were deliberately conducted (or so it seems to me) within the boundaries of various nuclear missile fields around the U.S.? Was this just an unintended, coincidental overlap with the animal-sampling activity? If so, why would the mutilators take the time to drop a dead cow inside the security fence surrounding a Minuteman missile launch facility, as was reported to have occurred outside Malmstrom AFB, in 1975? In my view, that type of provocative behavior is far more suggestive of some kind of taunting admonishment, by someone, rather than the by-product of a covert, disease data-gathering operation. (Or maybe it was just a simple predator kill. Maybe a really big, really strong coyote heaved the dead cow over the 10-foot high fence. Right, Mr. Rommel?)
In any case, whatever the actual origins and purposes underlying the animal mutilation phenomenon, the widespread UFO activity at nuclear missile sites in the fall of 1975 was certainly not the last to be reported. In fact, the next case I will describe, occurring some three years later, is exceedingly dramatic and perhaps without peer, at least as regards my own research.
References
1. http://www.mufon.com/bob_pratt/bigmama.html
2. Ferguson, Lawrence. [Colorado Springs] Gazette Telegraph, "An Unknown Menace Puzzles Cattlemen", October 22, 1977
3. Ibid.
4. http://www.parascope.com/articles/0597/mute2.htm
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-041021forensics,0,5762676.story
8. http://www.parascope.com/articles/0597/mute2.htm
9. National Institute for Discovery Science. "Unexplained Cattle Deaths and the Emergence of a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) Epidemic in North America", 2003.
--Robert Hastings
ufohastings.com
[email protected]