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The Cash/Landrum UFO Case

Yes, I've looked at it.

But your post #116 above gives the appearance you are referring to a dr wu post on this thread recently, not five years ago on another one.

#115 (the one before yours), was from Jan 2014
 
... it was the poster @Sentry who exposed this case as heavily embellished by the researcher, but as he hasn't been back since I don't know where the investigation stands now. What appears to be clear is that the injuries or afflictions were not caused by radiation. So... possibly stress? Would that be plausible? Did they even see anything? Anyone heard any updates?

The Blue Blurry Lines blog has been getting updated ever since. It was updated as recently as last month.
 
@dr wu - it was the poster @Sentry who exposed this case as heavily embellished by the researcher, but as he hasn't been back since I don't know where the investigation stands now. What appears to be clear is that the injuries or afflictions were not caused by radiation. So... possibly stress? Would that be plausible? Did they even see anything? Anyone heard any updates?
I published online, way back, some hugely insightful material about this case. Essentially, concerning the, 'unidentified helicopters'...

There's evidently still a reference to this:

John Schuessler looked into this idea, but he never defined it very well. Lt. Col. George Sarran also looked into the source of the helicopters, including special forces operations, but results were negative. Most of my investigation in this area is following leads introduced by UK researcher James Easton. He demonstrated that Task Force 158 was created for a second rescue attempt of american Hostages held in Iran. They used modified helicopters, including CH-47s in order to conduct long-range covert nocturnal missions. this group was based out of Ft. Campbell, KY, but ran exercises as far west as California. The big problem with this theory is that there is no documentation of their flights continuing thorough December. Task Force 158 is a great suspect, but there's no evidence, and there should be piles of it with so much manpower and equipment involved.
 
I could never see why anyone could deny that the victims were effected by radiation.

The symptoms didn't fit anything else.

If they had been thermal burns it would have been obvious.
 
The Blue Blurry Lines blog has been getting updated ever since. It was updated as recently as last month.

And here's the post we want!

Doesn't explain the UFOs and helicopters, but does point out there were a fair few people around at the time of the encounter who saw nothing, and that Cash and Landrum were by no means healthy before they made their UFO claims. Same old story, really: cast iron case is undermined and called into question, happens a lot these days.
 
I could never see why anyone could deny that the victims were effected by radiation.
The symptoms didn't fit anything else.
If they had been thermal burns it would have been obvious.

It's important to bear in mind that medical examinations didn't occur until months - and even years - after the incident. There was no examination of 'fresh' symptoms.

By and large these speculative diagnoses were based on patient's post hoc testimony rather than observable / physical evidence.

To the best of my recollection, no examining physician Cash or Landrum consulted was a specialist or expert on radiation sickness or effects. Also to the best of my recollection, none of the eventual examining physicians stated it was definitely radiation effects. Instead, they mentioned radiation effects as a category of malaise (a) they couldn't rule out and (b) was consistent with what the women reported.

In any case, any such 'radiation' need not have been of the nuclear-related variety. I seem to recall microwaves and intense ultraviolet light being mentioned as causes consistent with what we (think we) know about the symptoms.
 
Radiation poisoning from a short exposure presents in three main ways;
1/ a lethal dose kills you, quite quickly and horribly, within days or weeks. This didn't happen.
2/ A lower dose makes you sick, but you get better. A long time afterwards, many months or years, you may develop cancer; but it is often difficult to tell if this illness is associated with the dose received earlier or would have happened anyway.
3/ An even lower dose doesn't make you particularly sick, but many months or years later you may develop cancer; once again it is often difficult to tell if this illness is associated with the dose received earlier or would have happened anyway.
So there is no reason to definitely associate the Cash Landrum illnesses with this event, or to rule out a connection, for that matter.
 
It's important to bear in mind that medical examinations didn't occur until months - and even years - after the incident. There was no examination of 'fresh' symptoms.

.


From Timothy Good's account in 'Above Top Secret'

Page 297,

Betty drove the others home and arrived at her house at 9:50 p.m Then Horrific physical symptoms began to appear.

Betty reported a blinding headache, pains in her neck and nodules on her head and neck that burst, seeping clear fluid. Her eyes swelled shut and she was unable to see properly, and suffered from nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Four days later she was admitted as a burns victim to Parkway General Hospital, Houston. Various specialists were called in but none were able to properly diagnose her complaints. A week after leaving hospital Betty had to return, still suffering from headaches, nausea, swelling and loss of appetite. Even more alarming her hair began falling out leaving a temporary bald patch....

Note, all within a week of the incident, not 'month -or even years'.

INT21.
 
Right, but ... The ongoing medical inquiries stretched out over a much longer timeframe.
 
4 days after the event is not weeks, months, and years.....but more importantly why would too older women and a young child make up such a tale....to get free medical treatment..? That doesn't sound right either....and why elaborate the case of the ufo by claiming 20 helicopters or whatever..? They could have simply said they saw something weird and it burned them...why concoct such a tale?
It all sounds a bit ...odd.
 
4 days after the event is not weeks, months, and years.....but more importantly why would too older women and a young child make up such a tale....to get free medical treatment..? That doesn't sound right either....and why elaborate the case of the ufo by claiming 20 helicopters or whatever..? They could have simply said they saw something weird and it burned them...why concoct such a tale?
It all sounds a bit ...odd.

The timeframe / delays issue isn't so much about what they saw as about the viability of attributing physical after-effects to a specific cause (in this case, "radiation" in the sense of nuclear / atomic radiation) that muddies the waters by magnifying the woo factor.
 
The timeframe / delays issue isn't so much about what they saw as about the viability of attributing physical after-effects to a specific cause (in this case, "radiation" in the sense of nuclear / atomic radiation) that muddies the waters by magnifying the woo factor.
I understand but obviously they had an illness....why claim such an event happened..? ...just to get treatment for something else..?
It seems an elaborate charade to go through unless they hoped to gain something.
 
I understand but obviously they had an illness....why claim such an event happened..? ...just to get treatment for something else..?
It seems an elaborate charade to go through unless they hoped to gain something.

I don't think the incident was a total fabrication / charade intended to set the stage for filing a lawsuit, such as the one they actually filed seeking $20 million in compensation. This filing occurred sometime in August 1981 - circa 8 months after the incident.
 
And I understand that the judge would not even see the plaintiffs.

'Not one of ours' hence case dismissed.

INT21.
 
EnolaGaia,

The 'not one of ours' approach does not say that there was no object there. It allows two possibilities.

It was 'one of ours' but it is supposed to be secret and we can't (won't) accept responsibility for what happened as it will blow our cover.
Or, it must have been someone elses. Thus we have to come out and say that some form of extraterrestrial machine was there.

Even if the illness was cause by some other form of radiation, such as microwave, it would not detract from the case.

I.e. Something was there.

INT21.
 
The 'not one of ours' approach does not say that there was no object there. It allows two possibilities.
It was 'one of ours' but it is supposed to be secret and we can't (won't) accept responsibility for what happened as it will blow our cover.
Or, it must have been someone elses. Thus we have to come out and say that some form of extraterrestrial machine was there.

Even if the illness was cause by some other form of radiation, such as microwave, it would not detract from the case. ... .

Oh, I agree ... The incident was vaguely described, and there are all sorts of hypothetical scenarios that could be read into the description of what happened.

Some folks have focused on the notion they could have encountered some sort of military exercise, most commonly suggested to have been a special forces rehearsal for a rescue mission in Iran. This sort of scenario would explain all the alleged heavy choppers and a desire to keep the preparations secret.

If you take this training scenario one step further, it might help to explain what happened that night. In Vietnam the Chinook twin-rotor heavy helicopter was used as a lifter in downed aircraft recovery ops. One might suggest a special ops rehearsal exercise was underway, and the plan included using such copters to lift something off the ground and make away with it.

The one military or space related scenario I don't buy is any sort of field trials of new technology or aircraft. Such trials wouldn't have been conducted in as populated a locale as the greater Houston metro area. If such a trial had involved takeoffs and / or landings, a small road within a wooded expanse would be about as awful a test site as one could imagine.
 
That last paragraph says it all as far as the UFO phenomena goes.

If they are 'ours', would we fly them over cities ?

INT21.
 
... The 'not one of ours' approach does not say that there was no object there. It allows two possibilities. ...

You omitted a third possibility - that something was there, but the witnesses (for who knows what reason(s) ... ) over-sold and / or undermined their own story by glossing it with details that couldn't be truthful.

In re-reading the transcript of Betty Cash's August 1981 interview with USAF personnel I was struck by something I kick myself for not noticing before. She stated the twenty-some helicopters she'd seen and counted were of the tandem (twinned main) rotor variety and affirmed they were, or were equivalent to, American military CH-47 Chinooks. She also stated she'd been able to read writing on these Chinooks' sides that labeled them as US Air Force vehicles.

USAF never owned or operated Chinooks (or similar twin-rotor heavy copters). They (including the seaborne variant) were only used by the Army, Navy, and Marines.
 
Goodness - I remember reading about this case in the way back (must've been mid to late 80's, when I was devouring the local libraries UFO?Paranormal collection!).

I remembered reading something about the USAF denying involvement on the basis they never operated that type (CH-47 Chinook) and always wondered if that might just have been a crafty dodge because the helicopters where instead CH-46 Sea Knights...

That was in the days before the internet though, and checking wasn't quite so easy as a quick websearch!

On the occasions that its popped back into my mind I've never been able to trace it (weak Google-fu, unable to recall any names/locations/dates!), or find again the detail of the USAF's denial of operating the Chinook.

She also stated she'd been able to read writing on these Chinooks' sides that labeled them as US Air Force vehicles.

USAF never owned or operated Chinooks (or similar twin-rotor heavy copters).

Of course now that I finally connect with the case again, a quick websearch shows that whilst the USAF did order a small number of Sea Knights, they cancelled before receipt, and never operated those, either.

So there goes that idea!

Still, nice to get that particular 'spirit' 'exorcised', if you'll pardon the turn of phrase!

Edit: stuffed up quoting @EnolaGaia , d'oh!
 
You omitted a third possibility - that something was there, but the witnesses (for who knows what reason(s) ... ) over-sold and / or undermined their own story by glossing it with details that couldn't be truthful.

In re-reading the transcript of Betty Cash's August 1981 interview with USAF personnel I was struck by something I kick myself for not noticing before. She stated the twenty-some helicopters she'd seen and counted were of the tandem (twinned main) rotor variety and affirmed they were, or were equivalent to, American military CH-47 Chinooks. She also stated she'd been able to read writing on these Chinooks' sides that labeled them as US Air Force vehicles.

USAF never owned or operated Chinooks (or similar twin-rotor heavy copters). They (including the seaborne variant) were only used by the Army, Navy, and Marines.

I get the occasional Chinook or two flying over where I live and they are LOUD! You can hear them from miles away and when they get closer things start rattling in the house. I can't imagine what twenty would sound like but the racket must have been heard over a considerable distance and it would have seemed like a small earthquake.
 
I get the occasional Chinook or two flying over where I live and they are LOUD! You can hear them from miles away....

QFT, as we (well, some of us!) used to say! Don't see many in my neck of the woods, but i expect to see one crossing the horizon on its way to the RAF Waddington airshow in a couple of weeks (if it still takes place!), and I'll certainly hear it long before I see it!

Edit: Oh, they cancelled the Waddington show back in 2015, so its been longer than I thought since I saw one!
 
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Might as well throw in another theory. Could it have been a test gone wrong of a vehicle powered by the mysterious Bell, said to have been a field propulsion device developed in Nazi controlled Poland during the closing stages of the war? The Bell was said to have generated an extremely dangerous radiation that killed the first team of researchers and which (despite efforts to reduce it) remained a problem following its acquisition by the US after the war. Polish intelligence later claimed the Americans were continuing to attempt to employ the Bell (as a power unit for various vehicles) but the pilots were falling apart. The Kecksburg UFO incident was very likely an earlier failure in the same programme. Maybe someone will know whether any similar sightings have taken place after 1980? If not, perhaps this incident spelled the end of attempts to harness the exotic device.
 
Probably not relevant but I did see a couple of `black` helicopters some years back.

They had NO lights, apart from a very faint white one. (How this confirms to regulations I dont know, they certainly seemed very poorly lit)

But of course they were helicopters and so they were a bit noisy. (Understatement, it was night and I went out the front door to look at them because they were making an interesting racket)

I think the concepts of Helicopter and Stealth do not meet up very well.

The only way I could think of using one in such a situation would to make them expected, and so invisible. A police helicopter, maybe, or the bright yellow AA one, or the air ambulance.

Down here in Cornwall there is the coastguard and RNAS Coldrose.

Anything else would be strange and people would notice.
 
Maybe this might be helpful.

Can't believe it's 16 years since I wrote this reply to Chris!

[START]
Regarding:

From: "Chris Gibson" <[email protected]-net.com>
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 08:12:46 >+0100
Subject: RE: [UFORL] >Cash-Landrum + Chinooks

Chris wrote:

>>>These twelve CH-47 Chinooks. Could they have actually been Vertol CH-46 Sea Knights belonging to the US Marine Corps? Any-one checked that out? The USAF don't use Chinooks, whereas the US Army use loads.<<<

Chris,

I can now reveal that the connection with TF158 and Texas during late 1980 was Reese AFB, in Lubbock.

I noted it wasn't a big secret and that's because it's confirmed on the 'official Night Stalkers' web site.

The background to those Army Chinooks and a whole lot more is explained therein, see:

nightstalkers.com/history/1.html
{THIS LINK IS NOW DEFUNCT}
The pages from this defunct website can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080308090354/http://www.nightstalkers.com/history/1.html


I'm pleased to say I have persuaded my contact within TF158 that his first-hand insight can be published and he's also agreed to be identified as the source.

This will make any progress much easier, especially being able to identify him when contacting others who served during that formative May to December period.

I won't name said source for now.

That online history is apparently not entirely accurate and this is a point he seems keen to correct.

In summary, he explained:

"The second attempt, 'Honey Badger', was never executed as fortunately the hostages were released. Its planning and training were top secret at the time.

Since then I have never read a complete or accurate account of what took place out there in the western mountains and deserts
between May 1980 to Dec 1980. We only find bits and pieces here and there. Even the Night Stalker website description of operation 'Honey Badger' is flawed. It's probably due to the fact that the operation, or operations, had a sort of planning creep due to a changing hostage situation and/or location. Different people participating in that later stages from the former.

'Honey Badger', the training that I participated in, started in late May 1980 and was completed by Aug 1980. We fully expected to deploy at that time. However, we were released and sworn to secrecy back to our home base at Fort Campbell Ky.

That training, 'Honey Badger' involved the original cast operating out of Norton AFB California, Dugway Proving Grounds Utah and White Sands, New Mexico. There were no OH-6 involved then. Only Army Uh-60s, Ch-47ds, Air Force H-53 pavelow helicopters and C-130 aircraft. I am sure the 'Honey Badger' execution was to be very similar to the first rescue attempt.


The one main weakness of the first attempt was the helicopter element. That is, we had Marine pilots flying Navy helos conducting an Army aviation mission. Long range night vision goggle flights through mountains and over desert.

The problem with Army aviation in April 1980 was we were not trained to that capability as we had just received the Uh-60, so in May 1980 a decision was made to obtain that mission capability using the Uh-60 and conduct the second attempt to free the hostages using Army aviation flying Delta Force and Army Rangers in Army Uh-60s supported by Army Ch-47d, Air Force H-53 pavelow and C-130 transports.

That was 'operation Honey Badger'.


After returning to Ft Campbell add on operations which took place from Aug 1980 until Dec 1980, of which I have only second hand information; I did not participate.

That's when the Oh-6 'Little Bird' was added to the original task force with an entirely new plan in mind.

That's the training witnessed in Texas.


Although the second rescue attempt was not required due to their release in Jan 1981, the lessons learned from 'Honey Badger' and the long term benefits to our military aviation training, in particular to special operations, had become quite obvious to those of us who were involved".


Presently designated the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), the 'Night Stalkers' remain based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
[END]
 
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A missile base was buzzed by a large diamond shaped UFO, Malmstrom, iirc. Also, Nick Pope claims to have seen a clear photo of a diamond-shaped UFO that was chased by a jet that was circulated at the MOD for a period of time:

http://www.openminds.tv/the-disappearance-of-the-uks-most-spectacular-ufo-photo/40976

Over at Historum, a straightedge member came out of the blue to describe an experience he had with a huge diamond-shaped UFO at night in Miami FL that shone a paralyzing beam on him; I was able to find corroborative evidence of others having seen UFOs that same night in the area. He was so shaken and disturbed by recounting the event and the corroboration, that he apparently left the forum. I will post a link to his encounter when I find it again.. I'm waiting for an astronomer UFO witness friend's wife to get out of serious surgery and recount events where she and her son were hit by beams of light from objects that apparently chased them.
 
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I'm waiting for an astronomer UFO witness friend's wife to get out of serious surgery and recount events where she and her son were hit by beams of light from objects that apparently chased them.
Good on you. As have always emphasised, I am a ufologist to the core - loads of still unexplained cases out there!

As always, its attempting to, 'sort the wheat from the chaff'.

Will get back to you on this - need to revise my archive material!
 
I certainly enjoy reading your posts! :) I look forward to more. I never expected to be a UFO researcher --the UFOs made me do it! :abduct:
 
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