STORIES
The Thief of Cairo
King Farouk of Egypt was a bloated kleptomaniac
By David Cocksedge
He was what you might call ‘A right royal thief.’ The Egyptian monarchy was set up by the British in 1922, and on 28 April 1936 sixteen-year-old Farouk (born in Cairo on 11 February 1920) succeeded his father, Fuad I, as King of Egypt. The young lad impressed the populace with a live radio address to his people, but little did they know what they were in for. King Farouk made the fictional ‘Toad of Toad Hall’* look quite virtuous. Apart from his fast cars and legendary extravagance he was a skilled pickpocket who quickly became an embarrassment to his own country.
As a child, Farouk was a mass of contradictions. At the age of six, he cried inconsolably when a hawk killed and devoured his pet rabbit on a lawn; but on another occasion he grabbed a stray cat by the tail and killed it by smashing its head repeatedly into a brick wall. Though horribly spoilt, he donated half of his monthly child allowance (pocket money) to purchase books for impoverished children.
Unfortunately, his charitable deeds were often overshadowed by misbehaviour that totally discredited his name and status. As a teenager, Farouk was soon on the way to enjoying an international playboy lifestyle with expensive tastes in audacious gambling, expensive food, fast cars and loose women. But whilst his extravagance was reprehensible, it was surely no worse than that of many other royals worldwide. What set him apart was a zest for stealing that made the Artful Dodger (from the Dickens novel, Oliver Twist) look like a choir boy.
Farouk loved the sheer thrill of stealing from people he met. It was his walk on the wild side. He did not steal for profit either – many of the objects he ‘acquired’ were of modest value. Naturally he wanted to be the best at this crime and so he had a notorious thief sprung from Cairo’s Tural Prison to teach him the tricks of his trade. Under this dubious but expert tutelage, Farouk spent hours practising on a dummy clad in a suit which had tiny bells sewn into all the pockets. The slightest tinkling would give him away, so Farouk eventually learned the knack of removing items from the suit with such a soft touch that none of the bells sounded. At official receptions and parties abroad he was soon relieving dignitaries and their ladies of watches, wallets, cigarette lighters and powder compacts.
Within a few years he had stolen so much loot that he filled up an entire warehouse near his palace with the gear, and acquired the nickname ‘The Thief of Cairo.’
Farouk took most pleasure from robbing famous people, among them Sir Winston Churchill, whom he once relieved of an expensive pocket watch. To the King of Egypt it was just a jape, but Churchill and the British government were not amused and demanded that the watch be returned. Farouk reluctantly surrendered the ticker with a scribbled note of apology to Sir Winston.
Undeterred by that episode, Farouk pulled off an even bigger prank in 1944 when the exalted body of the Shah of Persia passed in state through Egypt. In a shameless act, he stole the ceremonial sword, belt and medals from the corpse, even though it was closely guarded. Suspicions were aroused because of Farouk’s reputation, but he steadfastly denied any involvement in such a shabby affair. Many years later, after he had been deposed, the items were found in one of his museums and returned to the Shah’s family.
Farouk was also not above capitalising on the misfortune of others. When German residents fled Cairo in 1939 as war engulfed Europe, the Egyptian King organised night-time looting parties to strip the unoccupied homes of their valuables.
Perhaps his most famous scam was known as ‘Farouk’s Treasure Box’. Any wealthy businessman passing through his lands was unofficially advised that the King would appreciate the gift of a box of chocolates from a certain shop in Cairo which just happened to be owned by the royal family. Although the sweets were affordable (at about 1,100 baht), the box – a jewel-encrusted casket – was a lot more expensive at around 42,300 baht. Most of the businessmen would be eager to win royal favour and so would purchase the box along with the chocolates and present them to Farouk. After devouring the contents, Farouk would quickly bank the cash, return the box to his own gift shop and then wait for the next sucker to come along.
King Farouk also enjoyed driving fast. Pretty soon he had a fleet of almost 100 cars that he loved to drive at high speed. When police stopped him for speeding, he had all his cars painted bright red and passed a law that none of his subjects were allowed to own vehicles of that colour. He could then zip along safe in the knowledge that the police would recognise one of his cars, and let him pass. As far as he was concerned, he was above the law.
He did not relish competition, however. If another motorist tried to take him on in a road ‘race’, Farouk would let the man pass, then pull a handgun from a shoulder holster and try to shoot out his rival’s tyres! Several motorists were blown off the road by this tactic, which came straight out of a Hollywood movie script. As ‘Mr Toad’ of Egypt, Farouk was the cause of many road accidents, yet bridled at any criticism of his own driving. When a Cairo newspaper editor noted that the King’s car was always followed by an ambulance, Farouk had the man arrested, fined and thrown in jail. It was obvious that Egypt’s monarch valued free speech and fair comment about as much as he believed in the Highway Code.
Of course, the inevitable soon happened: driving at high speed one day, he lost control of his favourite MG sports car, and crashed into a large tree, completely wrecking the vehicle. Whilst being amazingly lucky to survive unhurt, Farouk was terrified that his formidable mother, Queen Nazil, would hear about the accident and ‘ground’ him. The solution was to purchase an identical car; which was not an easy task since he had forbidden any of his subjects from owning red vehicles.
After days of frantic searching, Cairo police discovered a British expat in Alexandria who (illegally) owned a red MG which he kept in mint condition. Farouk duly summoned the man to Cairo and purchased his vehicle, leaving his mother ignorant of the accident.
Farouk’s mother had hoped that being elevated to the throne would bring some measure of maturity to her son, but her hopes were never realised. Farouk delighted in throwing food pellets at visiting dignitaries during formal luncheons, emitting squeals of delight whenever he scored a direct hit. He had his cars fitted with horns that mimicked the horrific frenzied yelping of dogs being run over, and at an outdoor reception on a hot day he once slipped a lump of ice down the brassiere of a curtsying guest to “cool her off….”
Such adolescent behaviour led the British High Commissioner, Sir Miles Lampson to describe Farouk in a 1937 report to the Foreign Office as ‘uneducated, lazy, untruthful, capricious, irresponsible and vain, though with a quick superficial intelligence and some charm of manner.’
Farouk was not about to change. After a series of nightmares during which he dreamed that he was being chased by lions, he went down to Cairo Zoo and shot both caged lions there with a powerful hunting rifle. The nightmares continued, however.
Farouk also enjoyed women and pornography, collecting a vast array of sex aids to fit every occasion and orifice, and often indulged in sex orgies with local hookers procured for him by palace servants.
But Farouk’s real love affair was with food. Like England’s infamous King John, he was a dedicated glutton. The bloated King John died at Newark Castle on 19 October 1216 after eating a vast supper of eels, veal and peaches washed down with cider. When Farouk’s mother forced him to follow a strict diet as a teenager, he had once eaten cat food from a bowl placed on the floor for one of the royal pets.
As an adult, Farouk’s breakfast started with a tray of 30 (yes thirty!) boiled eggs from which he would select perhaps ten to eat. He would then move on to consume large plates of lobster, steak, chicken and quail. His weight soon ballooned to around 180 kilogrammes, bolstered by drinking over 30 bottles of fizzy soft drinks every day.
Egypt’s monarch was also a compulsive gambler, but was quicker at losing money than weight. One night at the Deauville Casino in France he lost over $75,000 and once whilst playing poker he was called when holding three kings to a full house. “I am the fourth King!” he declared loudly as he flung his cards across the green baize in a childish rage.
Farouk constantly feared assassination, and always travelled abroad with at least four bodyguards. When gambling, he habitually carried a silver Derringer pistol in a breast pocket of his waistcoat, and a 9mm Beretta automatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his right armpit. Occasionally he would appear at the gaming tables dressed as an Arab sheikh, but always armed and with his bodyguards nearby.
The Egyptian people were remarkably tolerant of his excesses until they were subjected to the hardships of the Second World War (1939-1945). Whilst the port city of Alexandria was blacked out due to Italian bombing, Farouk had all the lights of his palace there burning away at night. All Italian citizens in Egypt were interred but Farouk’s Italian servants continued working for him. When questioned about this by Sir Miles Lampson, Farouk replied, “I will get rid of my Italians when you get rid of yours, old boy!” (This was a snide swipe at Lampson’s wife who was Italian-born).
When Farouk divorced his popular wife Farida in 1948, he scandalised Egyptian society by marrying 16-year-old Narriman Sadek three years later and embarking on a wildly extravagant honeymoon costing Egyptian taxpayers over $3,000 US a day. The loving couple booked all 150 rooms at the luxurious Caesar Augustus Hotel on the island of Capri and 13 weeks later they were still honeymooning in 32 rooms of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes…
Farouk was now openly despised as an ineffectual playboy out to plunder the country, and Egyptian military brass, led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, blamed him for the humiliating defeat in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948. It was alleged that Farouk and his business associates had profited from selling defective weapons to Egyptian and Syrian forces at a vast profit. The actor/comedian Red Skelton is reputed to have once asked Queen Nazil, “Do you realise that your son is farouking Egypt?”
Shortly after midnight on 23 July 1952, while Farouk’s court was enjoying a late champagne and caviar picnic at the summer palace in Alexandria, over 3,000 troops took control of Cairo. In a bloodless coup, his opulent and corrupt rule was over.
In desperation, Farouk appealed to the American ambassador for help, but the US government had no confidence in him and in fact case officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) based in Cairo had been secretly aiding the plotters. The Egyptian King was politely advised to go away and have intercourse with himself.
On 26 July, rebel troops led by Nasser surrounded the Ras el-Tin Palace, and forced Farouk to abdicate. At 6pm that evening, the now hated Egyptian monarch sailed for Naples in tears with his wife and children, seen off by General Naguib.
Farouk was forced to leave his homeland without much of his acquired wealth, but he did manage to smuggle out over 100 gold bars carefully stashed in crates labelled ‘whiskey’ and ‘champagne’.
Farouk’s baby son, Prince Ahmed Fuad, was proclaimed King and a Regency Council duly appointed, but within a year Egypt became a republic with Naguib as President until Nasser ousted him in another military coup in 1954.
Meantime Farouk continued to enjoy the high life in the tax haven of Monaco, a playground of the rich and famous. He soon divorced his young trophy wife and began dating a succession of movie starlets and young models, upholding his reputation as a balding, bloated gigolo.
The exiled Queen Nazil despaired of him. “I have failed as a mother”, she candidly admitted. “I raised a monster; destined never to finish anything in his life – his schooling, his marriages, and his reign. He is a despot who is only concerned with his own selfish pleasures.”
On 17 March 1965, shortly after is 45th birthday, Farouk took his latest playmate, a ravishing 22-year-old Italian blonde model named Annamaria Gatti out to a famous restaurant in Rome for a late-night supper. After consuming a dozen oysters, lobster thermidor, a treble portion of roast lamb with French fries, chestnut trifle and orange flavoured ice-cream, Farouk suddenly collapsed across the table, and died in the ambulance as he was being rushed to hospital.
Some dedicated people in history have died from fasting; but King Farouk, (just like England’s legendary King John), died from feasting.
(*:‘Toad of Toad Hall’ is a character from the children’s novel ‘Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame, published in 1908)
True Crimes Listing
True Crime stories published in the Observer:
2002
April –The Green Bicycle case; May – The Craig/Bentley Case; June – The A6 Murder Case; July – Murder of the Earl of Errol; August – The O J Simpson Murder Trial; September – Aileen Wuornos, female serial killer; October – Ronald Opus; November – Madame X; December – The Spree Killer (Chris Wilder)
2003
January – Shootout at Smiths’ Club; February – The Christine Dryland Case; March – Poisoned Pie in Essex; April – Massacre at Lidice; May – The Diana Davidson Murder Case; June – The death of Alkibiades; July – The Headsman of Colmar; August – Ruth Ellis; September – The Mel Jones Murder Case; October – George Smith, the bath murderer; November – Murder in a combat zone - Vietnam 1966; December – The Barn Restaurant Case
2004
January – The assassination of JFK; February – Judge Falcone and the Mafia; March – Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard; April – The hand in the sand case (New Zealand); May – The Hong Kong drugs murder Case; June and July – Jack the Ripper parts 1 & 2; August – Murder at Farleigh Court; September – London’s Bonnie & Clyde; October – Ruth Snyder Case; November – Death of a rock star (Jim Morrison); December – Torso in the Thames
2005
January – Murder in the Red Barn; February – Gangland double cross; March – Fatal Attraction in Ulster; April – Guernica; May – Bonnie & Clyde (USA); June – Murder of Jill Dando; July – Pedro Lopez, Monster of the Andes; August – Deadly Aperitif; September – Henry VIII & his wives; October – Sid & Nancy; November – The real Dracula; December – Poolan Devi, India’s Bandit Queen
2006
January and February – Charles Sobhraj parts 1& 2; March – Marilyn Monroe; April – The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe); May – Mass murderer Ted Bundy; June – 10 Rillington Place (Reg Christie); July – Son of Sam (David Berkowitz); August – Tasmania’s Aborigines; September – The Nuremberg Trials; October – Watergate; November – Charlie Manson & his Angels; December – Assassination of Heydrich
2007
January – Betty Broderick Case; February – Fred & Rosemary West; March – Billy The Kid; April – Ned Kelly; May – Assassination of Anwar Sadat; June – Assassination of Robert Kennedy; July – Assassination of Gandhi; August - Halabja; September - Amritsar; October – Trials of Oscar Wilde; November – The Dreyfus Affair; December – Trial of Stephen Ward
2008
January – John Stonehouse; February – Rinkagate; March – Sir Walter Raleigh; April – Assassination of Abraham Lincoln; May – Execution of King Charles I; June – Wild Bill Hickok; July – Gary Powers; August – Terror at the 1972 Munich Olympics; September – The Borgias; October – Ted Kennedy & Mary Jo Kopechne; November – Guy Fawkes; December – Massacre at Wounded Knee;
2009
January – Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate, natural born killers; February – Dick Turpin; World’s most famous highwayman; March – King Farouk of Egypt, ‘The Thief of Cairo’; April – Elizabeth Bathory, ‘The Blood Countess’; May – Colin Ireland, ‘The Fairy Liquidator’ ; June – The Rachel Nickell murder case; July – Jeffrey Dahmer, ‘The American Cannibal’
Travel Bishop
What a dive!
THAILAND’S popularity as a leading dive destination is given additional credibility by the year-round potential of good diving conditions. This situation is created by the Gulf and Andaman bodies of water having opposing seasonal conditions. When waters are murky in Phuket, then Samui is in its peak season and vice versa.
Most divers still head for the Similan Islands' clear blue waters as the true dive experts’ number one destination. Charters from Phuket can cost around 20,000 baht for a 4 day trip to both the Similan and Surin islands. This usually includes onboard air-con accommodation, all meals and soft drinks as well as dive master services and shore excursions. There are few dive destinations that offer such value for money. Maybe Zanzibar comes close but currently (get it?) Thailand diving is a good deal.
Koh Lak, being the nearest real jetty point for Similan trips offers good diving and snorkelling conditions for those not having the time for a full 4-day jaunt. Koh Rang Nok and Koh Phota offer good coral and an abundance of fish near to the mainland. Accommodation at Koh Lak has re-developed over the last 4 years and is now quite extensive and progressively modern in appearance. There are several Koh Lak-based dive operators perhaps giving better value for money than their Patong counterparts.
The islands further south are still not particularly developed for full diving and places such as Koh Lanta and Turatao still rely on snorkeling as the mainstay for water sports. It would seem that their days are numbered, especially with the number of new resorts on Lanta Island.
Still on the Andaman side is the newly-developed dive destination of Koh Racha Yai where those in search of peace and quiet can still use Baan Raya as opposed to the 5-star Racha Resort. Racha Yai is 23 km south of Phuket, just enough to stop the rat race, although a few Patong–based operators still appear for daily jaunts. Racha Yai is one of the few places where weather conditions do not seem to matter. If the island’s windward side has squawls, it’s simply a ten minute walk to the leeward beach for excellent diving. That’s for real, as it is also one of the few places where divers simply walk in from the beach! With bungalows starting around 2,000 baht per night it’s worth the one hour boat trip from Phuket.
It’s fair to say that most divers would now avoid Phi Phi which has become over-run with day-tripping snorkellers. However not far away are Krabi’s excellent clear waters and there are many small islets to choose from for a diver’s day out.
Switching to the Gulf of Thailand, Samui is without doubt the leader of the pack with Koh Tao being the mainstay for serious divers. At last count there were at least 30 dive operators on Koh Tao itself. Although the waters around Samui, Phangan and Koh Tao are excellent, the big attraction is the Angthong marine Park, a 45-minute boat journey to the North East. With a small reef running from here past Chumphon and as far north as Bang Saphan, the diving conditions are good and marine life is plentiful. Chaweng Beach operators now offer dive/snorkel alternatives for Angthong, some with overnight island camping. Chumphon Cabanas, a delightful mini resort just north of town offers excellent weekend dive trips, and
with this reef running that far north excursions from Hua Hin and Bang Saphan are now operating.
The northern end of the stretch is not as exciting but it makes a weekend dive trip from Bangkok via Hua Hin an affordable alternative to the eastern Gulf’s Koh Chang option, especially when travel time from Bangkok is about the same and no boat crossing is required.
Koh Chang does however have a more long-standing reputation and diving facilities there have been in place for many years. Koh Yuak is the ‘in’ place for skin diving at the moment. Just remember to go there when Phuket is in low season or you will be disappointed.
The newest dive charter is from Koh Chang into Cambodian waters on a 5-7 day yacht jaunt. At around $500 US per day for the vessel charter, you'll need a decent sized group for a bargain trip, but the prize is 30-40 metres of visibility in virtually untouched waters. Now that's diving!
If all the above destinations are simply out of reach, one can still fall back on the experts in Bangkok and Pattaya for starter and refresher courses. These normally last 4 days and include pool coaching in Bangkok plus 2 nights in Pattaya with day and night dives – all for around 15,000 baht.
If you are an overseas visitor you can expect to pay a fee in this price range for such courses anywhere throughout Thailand. There is the real enticement… .value for money diving.
(Tom Bishop is MD of DTC Travel in Bangkok and ‘The Travel Bishop’ on www.RadioBangkok.net)
Insight: The importance of elephants in Thailand
In Thailand, some 4,400 elephants are fighting for their survival. Almost 2,000 of these magnificent beasts are domesticated; and some doomed, it seems, to roam the cities and towns to earn cash for their handlers.
The Thai elephant faces a decline in natural habitat, ivory poachers, and even death at the hand of man if caught trespassing into human settlements close by forested areas of the country.
Elephant handlers (mahouts) often bring domesticated animals into cities seeking work. The locations can spell danger: broken sidewalks, holes in roads and fast-moving traffic can often result in accidents.
Nevertheless, there is a strong bond between the Thai people and elephants. Elephants hold a revered place in society, because of their symbolic importance to monarchs, religion, and the nation as a whole.
Thai tradition abounds with examples of the elephant playing an important role in the workings of the Kingdom. Most significant of all, perhaps, is the white elephant, prized because it is a rare animal judged fit only for royal duties.
According to ancient royal Thai traditions, a white elephant is a noble beast of special importance, exemplifying a king's honour and glory. Known in Thai as ‘Chang Samkhan’, a white elephant is a gift fit for a king and to acquire one during his reign, will bring about prosperity and happiness throughout the kingdom.
If any province in Thailand comes across a white elephant, the find has to be reported to the Ministry of Interior. They notify the Bureau of the Royal Household, which conducts a physical examination to decide if the elephant bears the complete characteristics of a special, noble beast.
Determining whether or not an elephant possesses special features is a daunting task and requires a physical check of the animal's body. This means hair, tail, eyes, toenails, genitals, and the roof of the mouth and skin. These body parts must confirm to those defined as ‘special characteristics.’
When this has been satisfactorily established the Bureau informs His Majesty the King of their findings. Following His Majesty's consent, a ceremony takes place to bestow honour on the elephant and elevate it to the position of a royal white elephant, honored as a prince after the appointment ceremony ends.
This ancient, royal tradition is most important and a way to show gratitude to elephants that have proved of great value to Thailand - in times of war and peace.
Kings of the Ayutthaya Period acquired no fewer than nineteen white elephants. Seven of these magnificent beasts were found during the reign of King Mahachakkaphat (1548-1569), a King whose glorious pursuits were recognized internationally. The Supreme Patriarch of the day, and noblemen, presented the king with the title ‘King of the White Elephant.’
During the Rattanakosin Period, King Rama I was said to possess ten white elephants, while King Rama II possessed six. Three ranked as ‘major’ white elephants. From that time, until the reign of King Vajiravudh (Rama VI), the national flag of Thailand bore a white elephant on a red background.
Succeeding kings each possessed white elephants: King Rama V had 19, while Kings Rama VI and VII each had one.
The present King of Thailand, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) possesses 10 white elephants with another six, not yet appointed royal elephants. The first white elephant appointed during His Majesty's reign is known as ‘Phra Sawet Adulyadej Phanon.’
Elephants are of immense importance in Thailand. They are smart land mammals and hard-working beasts, providing transportation for mankind. At times of war, elephants played an indispensable role in the war machine of Thailand and other Asian countries.
Commanders fighting duels on elephant back, documented throughout Thai history, required strategic planning and great skills to lead armies to win wars. Elephants in battle played a sterling part in maintaining the sovereignty of Thailand in past war periods.
The elephant appears in many Thai proverbs and sayings and is an emblem on regalia of national importance such as prior national flags of Thailand, royal emblems, and royal decorations. We hardly ever see these magnificent beasts here in the resort city of Hua Hin, but undoubtedly, the elephant holds pride of place as the national symbol of the Kingdom of Thailand.
The Roswell Incident
Did an alien spaceship crash there in 1947?
Probably only the assassination of JFK in November 1963 has spawned more conspiracy theories in North America than the famous ‘Roswell Incident’. Specifically, it has been widely alleged that an alien craft from another planet crash-landed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947 and military authorities moved swiftly to cover up the fact by claiming that an experimental ‘weather balloon’ project had failed.
That’s all it was, folks. No need for alarm; please return to watching your favourite soap-operas on TV. There is really no need for ‘X-Files’ special FBI agents Fox (‘Spooky’) Mulder (David Duchvony) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) to investigate this case.
But the rumours persisted; so much so that there is a large ‘alien festival’ and UFO conference held from 4 to 11 July every year in the town of Roswell, New Mexico, USA. This event attracts hordes of ‘UFO freaks’ and tourists, which cannot be bad for local trade, of course. Now so many comedians walk around Roswell every July dressed in grotesque and laughable alien outfits, it has been speculated that if a genuine alien DID land there; he/she or it would not even attract any attention!
Roswell has also inspired so many books, TV documentaries and movies that it has made substantial fortunes for some experts in the field of extra-terrestrial activity.
Stripped of all the fantastic theories and gobbledygook, here is a set of solid, confirmed facts on the Roswell incident, courtesy of veteran writer and investigative journalist Jay Clarke, who writes under the pen-name ‘Michael Slade’:
In the first week of July 1947, the morning after a fierce thunderstorm, a New Mexico rancher named Mack Brazel saddled up his horse and rode out to check on his sheep. He found some unusual debris strewn around one pas
ture. Whatever crash-landed there had gouged a shallow trench several hundred feet across hard ground. After taking a few pieces of the strange metal from the debris to show to his neighbours, Brazel drove his pickup into Roswell to report the incident to Sheriff George Wilcox, who passed the information on to officials at Roswell Army Air Field, home base of the 509th Bomb Group – perhaps significantly the unit that had dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki two years earlier in August 1945.
US military forces moved swiftly to lock down the ‘crash site’ and retrieve the wreckage, which was first moved to Roswell Army Air Field, then later flown to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.
On 8 July 1947, the commander of the 509th, Colonel William Blanchard, issued a press release stating that the wreckage of a ‘crashed disk’ had been recovered. The news quickly made headlines in over 30 newspapers across the USA. Within hours of Colonel Blanchard’s press release, the commander of the 8th Air Force, General Roger Ramey, issued a chaser release explaining that the 509th Bomb Group had ‘mis-identified’ a weather balloon and its radar reflector as a crashed disk of some kind. To prove his point to reporters, Ramey displayed the balloon’s remnants in his office and allowed photos to be taken. The press duly reported the official correction on 9 July.
To this day, that remains the official position of the Pentagon. Case closed. Those facts, of course, gave rise to wild speculation about a top-level cover-up.
According to the legend of the Roswell Incident, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician working for the Ballard Funeral Home, received several telephone calls on the afternoon of 8th July from the mortuary officer at Roswell Army Air Field. The latter wanted to know about the availability of hermetically sealed caskets and the best way to preserve bodies that had been exposed to the elements for a few days without altering the chemical composition of the tissues.
That evening Dennis drove to the army hospital, where he saw two military trucks stocked with pieces of wreckage marked with weird symbols. Inside the building, he began a conversation with a nurse that he knew, but two MP’s threatened him with physical violence and forced him to leave. The next day, he met the nurse again in a coffee shop in Roswell, where she told him that she had assisted two doctors doing autopsies on five ‘non-human’ bodies. One body was almost intact, she said, but all the others were badly mangled. She then drew a rough diagram of these alien creatures, which she said were bipeds, smaller than humans, but with big eyes and very large heads. Within days, she was posted away abroad and has never been seen since.
Similar strong-arm techniques were used on other Roswell witnesses. Mack Brazel was sequestered for a week by military personnel, and sworn to secrecy on his release from custody. Sheriff Wilcox was warned that he would be ‘severely disciplined’ if he ever talked about what he had seen whilst investigating the crash site. Any remaining pieces of wreckage that surfaced were immediately seized by military staffers and taken away.
But none of that could squelch the strong rumour that there were in fact THREE crash sites, not one. The debris that Brazel had found was in the middle. Some thirty miles to the south-east, investigators had come upon what remained of the ‘flying disk’ and what (allegedly) remained of its ‘alien’ crew. A few miles north-west, there was a ‘touch-down’ point of fused sand and baked soil.
There are also reports that military personnel began clearing up the debris as early as 4th July; well before Brazel’s discovery on the 7th; which means that the military brass at the Roswell base knew about the ‘crash’ (or whatever it was) many hours before local civilians did.
On 8th July, Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer of the 509th, had taken some of the debris to Texas to show to General Ramsey. In the general’s office, that debris was switched for the ‘weather balloon’ wreckage that later appeared in the newspapers.
When he was interviewed about the strange wreckage many years later in 1979, Marcel, (now free from restrictions regarding classified information) stated, “It was not a weather balloon. Nor was it an aircraft or a missile. That stuff would not burn and it weighed almost nothing. It would not bend. We even tried making a dent in it with a sledgehammer. We hit that sucker as hard as we could and there was still no dent in it. Whatever that material was, it was extremely tough, and like nothing I had ever seen before – and I had high clearance regarding sensitive military secrets at that time.”
In 1994, a US congressman asked for “Information on the alleged crash and recovery of an alleged extra-terrestrial vehicle and its alien occupants near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947.” His request resulted in ‘The Roswell Report: Case Closed’; a paper released by the US military later that year. ‘There is no dispute that something happened near Roswell in July 1947’, the report concluded, ‘but it was not an aircraft or missile crash or some kind of nuclear accident, or an accident involving an alien space craft.’
Instead, it was an unfortunate accident that resulted from a ‘Top Secret balloon project designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests, known as Project Mogul’. The so-called Roswell Incident, the report concluded, grew out of ‘over-reaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel in originally reporting that a ‘flying disk’ had been recovered.’ The report also dismissed rumours of the recovery of ‘alien bodies’ from one of the crash sites. ‘There were no alien passengers therein’, it stated. Case closed. Again. And this time we really mean it, folks.
The following year (1995), a British movie producer named Ray Santilli suddenly ‘discovered’ footage of what was said to be the alien autopsy referred to by the nurse at Roswell in 1947. This film has since been widely derided and is almost certainly a crude hoax, because ‘surgeons’ shown in it disregarded conventional autopsy procedures – something that was quickly spotted by experts in the field. When he was interviewed on British television in 2006 Santilli admitted that most of the film was a ‘reconstruction’ of footage he was shown by an American government source, but had not been allowed to copy. But the weird film, fake or not, contributed to a strange epilogue.
In 1997, fifty years after the Roswell Incident, the Pentagon again issued a press release on what apparently had happened in New Mexico. This concluded that ‘aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert in July 1947 were actually ‘anthropomorphic test dummies’ carried aloft by US Air Force high-altitude balloons for scientific research. In other words, the Roswell Incident was really just an accident involving not one but TWO balloons: one from Project Mogul, the other one full of test dummies.
Lieutenant Walter Haut, Public Relations Officer at the Roswell Air Base in 1947, said many years later that he had seen alien bodies (which he described as ‘humanoid extra-terrestrials’) recovered from the third crash site. He also stated that the full clean-up operation near Roswell had taken months as military personnel collected debris from the desert, some of it 75 miles from the base.
Intelligence brass at the Pentagon knew that disinformation works best when it is carefully mixed in with some established facts. Something had crashed in the early hours of either 4 or 7th July 1947 in the desert near Roswell, and the rumours surrounding the now world-famous incident were generated by rival press releases issued by the Pentagon.
No balloon known to man could gouge a trench hundreds of feet long into the desert shale, scattering debris over a large area. A flying disk, on the other hand, would skip across hard shale like a stone skimmed over water, similar to the ‘bouncing bomb’ invented by Barnes-Wallis and used by the British against Nazi heavy water dams in Norway during World War II.
The mystery deepens when we consider this: a few weeks before, on 24 June 1947, pilot civilian Kenneth Anderson had reported experiencing a mid-flight flashing in his eyes, “as if a mirror was reflecting sunlight at me,” as he flew a light aircraft at 13,000 feet. Then he saw what he described as nine luminous aircraft flying near Mount Rainier, in Washington State. Each craft seemed to be shaped like a “pie plate” and flew “like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.” He estimated the speed of the craft to be in the region of 2,600 kilometres per hour (1,625 mph).
A press report of his remarks gave birth to the now famous term ‘flying saucer,’ and pretty soon Anderson’s one strange sighting had exploded into more than 850 eye witness reports of unidentified flying objects in the skies of the USA.
Jay Clarke theorises, ‘By suppressing the truth behind a cover story about a weather balloon, the Pentagon had tapped into the rising hysteria about aliens from outer space. If the cover-up succeeded, mission accomplished. And if it was exposed by conspiracy theorists as an attempt to cover up something unbelievable, rational minds would conclude that the whole outlandish incident had been fabricated by kooks out to gain some publicity for themselves. If you want to keep the lid on what really happened, that’s a win-win situation for military brass involved in keeping official secrets.
‘But what really piques my interest is the fact that fifty years later (in 1997) the Pentagon was STILL playing the spin-doctor game. Why exactly would the official Roswell Report undercut the ‘weather balloon’ story by introducing Project Mogul and then confront the alien issue with some obvious drivel about test dummies and the highly unlikely simultaneous crashing of two balloons, unless there actually WAS something being covered up? No, the Pentagon doth protest too much, I fear.
‘If there were three crash sites leading from north-west to south-east, that would line up with Mount Rainier in the Pacific Northwest, where Kenneth Anderson claimed that he had seen nine unidentified flying objects (UFO’s) from the cockpit of his own aircraft on 24 June that year.’
Clarke’s best bet by way of an explanation of the incident is this: some sort of advanced flying craft was being tested amid great secrecy by the 509th Group near Roswell that summer. When it malfunctioned and crashed (possibly because of the electric thunderstorm) in early July the military authorities moved quickly to salvage the wreckage, and then put a security lid down; first by claiming that a weather balloon had come down, and later mentioning Project Mogul.
But, I hear you ask - what about those small ‘alien beings’ supposedly found inside the wrecked craft? One plausible explanation is that they may have been primates. Scientists have often used Rhesus monkeys in experimental space rockets designed to carry living creatures, as these primates are genetically almost identical to humans. Clothed in special space suits, these monkeys might just be mistaken for extra-terrestrial ‘aliens’. The rumoured autopsy, therefore, may have in fact been performed on unfortunate monkeys who had died in the crash of some experimental craft being tested in secret by the US Military.
What the authorities at Roswell Air Base perhaps unwittingly did was spark off an alien conspiracy. This quickly grew into an industry localised in Roswell, which now hosts an UFO convention and a week-long gala party for space kooks and inquisitive tourists every year. This is of course excellent for business: every July, local hoteliers, bars and shops are able to make a good profit in this otherwise unremarkable American township in New Mexico.
Something very strange obviously happened in the desert near Roswell back in early July 1947, and the incident has grown into a massive conspiracy industry ever since. Perhaps in another few years (by July 2017 maybe?) the truth may be officially revealed.
The only question is – will we believe it?
This was the winning entry in a writing competition featuring dogs, entitled, ‘In Praise of the Underdog’ organised by Headrock Dogs as part of their ongoing charity fundraisers. A panel of three judges decided on the winner – Ms Susan de Winton Blissett from Calgary. Here is her entry:
Meant to be …………
What is it about the certainties in life? What was it that drew me to this one particular dog out of the many that I had seen that day? Was there some kindred feeling to a desperate past? Those downcast eyes, the hunched body, the fear. Not even a gentle word could raise the dog’s head. No tail awagging. The warning signs on the door that this dog should not be homed with other dogs or cats o
r children would not deter me. Somehow I knew – this was meant to be. I asked surprised staff if I could go in with this dog. She, yes, she was a girl, was not too friendly and I should take care. I entered the cage and she backed away. I hunched down. I made myself disinterested. No eye contact – I remembered all the Dog Whisperer programmes I had watched. Suddenly I felt a cold nose on my hand. I remained quite still. I waited. I had all the time in the world. Then she came closer. That warm body leant against me. I said something – I don’t remember what. Probably as banal as ‘Hello’. I spied the very white tip of the tail twitch. I waited. I moved my fingers against the underside of her chin. Her eyes closed and she pushed down to get to a particular spot that needed scratching. I obliged. Yes, that was a definite sign of a tail wag. Somehow she knew – this was meant to be.
Five days later I brought her home. I named her Molly. We have been through a long journey of discovery together. Discovering trust. Discovering loyalty. Discovering love. How this bond developed gave so much joy. Explaining why she had to stay home on her own was that I needed to go to buy some milk and that I wouldn’t be long. For one minute or one hour she would wait patiently looking out of the window for my return. For years I made a point of going to the fridge to place the pretend milk as I didn’t want her to think I had lied to her. I think she is wise to me now.
How long was it until she no longer flinched if I moved my hand too quickly? Too long. Being scared of the wind blowing, or thunder? Too long.
She is getting old. Her barking at the mail man is only half-hearted now. Really just for show. She even tolerates the dog in the garden next door. She no longer flinches and can sleep through the loudest storm. We treasure our ‘together’ times; from long walks to watching hockey on the television. Still, those few minutes every morning just as I awake, when a cold nose lays itself on my hand and then a hairy chin pushes on my fingers to find that same itch that never left is always there as the most precious of times from when we first met - when somehow we knew – this was meant to be.
(This is the true story of my German Shepherd x Wolfhound, Molly. I adopted her in England 6 years ago. We now live in Calgary, Canada.)
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