Sunday, May 6, 2012

CLOSE ENCOUNTER IN CAMBODIA - FINAL



BOSTROM:  What do you think the diameter was?
Joe:  It's hard to judge because we were a little distance from it.  I would say that it was at a bare minimum of 50 feet.It could have been as far across as 150 feet.  It was very difficult to judge.  It was a mirrored surface.  So you're looking at something and the jungle is being reflected and its really hard to judge the size.  I know it was at least as tall as a five story building.  What didn't make any sense is why it should be spheroid.  Whatever propulsion system it required, I don't know.  Perhaps it's some type of anti-gravity drive and you'd have to have everything centered.
BOSTROM:  Was it round like a ball?
Joe:  Round like a ball.  Perfectly round as far as I could tell.  There was one symbol on the side of what appeared to be, I would say, black paint.  Either this, or there was just no coating on this area, of a simple symbol of an arc.  Almost like a pyramid with a line drawn underneath it.


We returned to base.  The Thais of course weren't going to say anything to anybody.  They saw nothing.  They heard nothing.  They were just along for the ride, which was a typical reaction for the Thais. They didn't want o get involved.  They were quite shaken by it as we were.  It took us approximately three days to get back to the border.
BOSTROM:  What did everybody talk about on the way back?
Joe:  Absolutely nothing.  We decided on the way back that nobody say anything.  We didn't hear anything.  We didn't know anything about it.  We got back to the base and the first thing we did was head for a hot shower, because you had to pull all the lice off you and everything else and felt pretty darn dirty.


BOSTROM:  The boy that got knocked down, was he alright?
Joe:  He was alright at that point  At that point he was fine.  He seemed to be just fine.  He was a corporal and went to his barracks.  I was in officer's barracks.  A fellow from the Provost Marshal's office came in and informed me that I had to report to the Captain's office immediately  I said, do I have time to rinse off?  He said, just barely.  He said put on some clothes and get over there.  They want to talk to you right now.  I asked him what it was about.  He said, I don't know, they won't tell me, just get your tail over there, it's something very heavy.  He said they were quite confused about something  I walked into the Captain's office.  We were met by the captain, a couple of majors, a Colonel and some civilians.  If you've ever worked with anybody with the "firm" they reek of it.  You generally expect them in gray flannel suits and white socks but these fellows just reeked of the "firm" and (name withheld) was in it.
BOSTROM: __________?
Joe: ______________, this gentleman rode with MJ.
BOSTROM:  The what now?
Joe:  MJ - Majestic 12.
BOSTROM:  MJ-12?
Joe:  Right.  The only way we ever heard him call it was MJ-12 or MJ.  We knew he worked for that.  We didn't know what the heck it was.  The only thing we knew was that any enemy aircraft that was sighted had to be reported to him.  Any photographs we took had to be given to him.  They were overly concerned about enemy aircraft, unusual sightings, things like that.  Just anything out of the ordinary.  So we dealt with him sometimes almost on a daily basis.  He'd call us in occasionally to look at photographs and say, what is this?  And we'd say that's a Russian gun ship; it has so much armament - OK that's what I want to know, thank you very much, discuss this with no one and have a nice day.  He was very single sided with information.  We gave him everything.  He told us nothing  Absolutely nothing.  He was a cold blooded man.  I don't think I ever saw the man sweat.  Most of the time he wore a black suit or a dark gray flannel suit.  When you are in Thailand and it's at that point in the year it's somewhere between 97 and 100 degrees, 100 to 110% relatively humidity, it's so hot you get heat that's like fog.  And he was cold blooded.  I've never seen another human being in my life like that.  I don't think I ever saw him sweat except for this incident.  And he had a cold sweat going into this.  He ended up taking his jacket off.  You never see him outside of a jacket.  They sat us down and they grilled us for that day at least 3 1/2 to 4 hours.  And they kept asking the same questions over and over.  And I was trying to find out who it was that told them because when we got back together later nobody had said anything.  So something, or somebody, snitched and said well you don't tell anybody you told.
BOSTROM:  Someone would have had to run in immediately and tell them.
Joe:  We hadn't been back more than an hour.  We usually took a shower, got cleaned up and got a little rest before we were debriefed because that could sometimes take many hours.  It was very interesting.  They even sequestered us in our quarters.  We were told not to have any outside activities at all and meals would be brought to us.  We were not to talk to any unauthorized personnel which meant them or someone directly with authorization from the Provost Marshal's Office.  Then we spent the next 3 to 3 1/2 weeks talking to various people, some of which I don't know who in the heck they were.  Several were psychologists.  It was very obvious by the kind of questions we were being asked and they started dragging out the ink blots.  If your familiar with the Military when they generally bring in the ink blots and try to make it sound like something of a sexual nature they leave you alone. They figure this guys healthy, this guys fine and get out of my office - you are alright.  We went on with this for two or 2 1/2 weeks then they started using narcohypnosis.
BOSTROM:  How did that operate?.
Joe:  Essentially they sit you in a chair, make sure your nice and comfy.  Hook up the sphygmomanometer, blood pressure tape, and get you highly relaxed using soothing music sometimes, and give you an injection of a basically, what is called a hypnotic drug.  There were drugs like Seconal, Scopolamine - the type that have a tendency to reducing what they call psychic resistance.  You get your body as relaxed as possible and you loose your will.  They actually hypnotize you at that point.  It's a combination of drugs and hypnosis.  It's my understanding we were trained in our training to go through tortures and things like that.  There wasn't a one of us that couldn't pass a polygraph test and lie about his age, the color of his mother and the color of the sky.  They had us as well covered as they could in case we were captured we knew how to respond  The only thing I can say that occurred during that time was that in one way or another they altered our memories.  Now, I do not know whether they.. we saw something else... or they gave us a different memory and that's what we ended up with or what we saw was much worse than occurred and I toned it down.  I do know that every one of us still have occasional nightmares about it and we get flashes of things that are just an incredible blood-bath.  George was reassigned from our unit after we had all cleared through medical and psychological.  I was called into the Captain's office, approximately what would have been 6 or 8 weeks after the incident to identify a body they told me was George.  Now I'd seen the man on the base a few days before.  The body they showed me was far, far decomposed.  Even in the jungle where you have rapid decomposition.
BOSTROM:  But you couldn't positively identify the body?
Joe:  I couldn't identify it as George.  The flesh was all liquified.
BOSTROM:  So for all you could see it may have been someone else.
Joe:  The only thing I can say is his tissue had seemed to suffer from some kind of extreme disruption - like every cell wall had been broken.  Like you see with a cold sore. It's called lisodumine when the cells rupture and the virus comes out for some kind of bacteriological agent in it that affected it.  I don't think it was the latter.  I think whatever happened to him - whether they transferred him to show me the body and say that's George.
BOSTROM:  Why would they show you a body you couldn't identify?
Joe:  The people we were dealing with were very, very careful about covering all avenues.  They never left a thread hanging - and I don't know - I lost all track of it at that point.  As far as I knew he was dead.  Why, I was called in to identify the body and sign the papers.  The only way I could identify him was his dog tags.  The usual thing was that during combat, because of the nature of our unit. dog tags were retrieved by a ranking officer and returned to you when you returned to base.  We carried what was called T8407-?-T101 which was called a get-out-of-jail-free card.  It was a cardboard card with two sides and department logo on one side to say the individual was  allowed to be carrying strange and unusual weapons, may or may not be in uniform and not to be detained for any reason whatsoever.  If this card is found on a body it is to be burned with the body and reported to a telephone number state side and a group to contact and it went back to combak.


BOSTROM:  Is that about all you can remember?
Joe: Well that's the problem.  If we really sit down and try to pressure us through it, you get confused.  I talked to a couple of fellows that were involved in it and they have the same kind of problem. Slowly but surely, things emerge and over the years more and more has come up.  It was years before I ever had a desire at all to talk about it.  Not because it was frightening because the "firm" told us not to or that they were going to place it under the National Security act, but because I absolutely had no desire whatsoever to talk about it.


BOSTROM:  Do you remember any other details such as how they entered the craft?
Joe:  It was like a section slid down.  Like it just created itself on the side and slid down.
BOSTROM: Do you remember a ramp?
Joe: It slid down and it tilted down to the ground had a stair on it and formed a ramp for them to walk right up with steps on it.
BOSTROM:  Did it look like they were walking on steps?
Joe:  It had steps on it because they were stepping and it wasn't like they shuffled on the ramp.  Their gait was very smooth, almost unerring and they covered a lot of ground in a little bit of time.  But the main problem is like I said, if we sit down and try to really go through the details and think hard about it I end up almost with an anxiety attack.  Whatever it was that they did to bury those things is pretty permanent.  Over the years, I still occasionally have nightmares about it.  I'd wake up in a cold sweat and I'd remember for awhile.  It's frustrating.  I find myself angry because I don't know what the heck they did to us.
BOSTROM:  Do you know one or two of the people and can you get a hold of them today?
Joe: Yes, there's five or six I could get a hold of.  Most of them just refuse to talk about it at all.  Two of them I know still work for the "firm."  They are active so they're not going to talk about it.  Bill suffers from delayed stress syndrome and when he came home he was never the same.
BOSTROM:  Has someone contacted you lately on this?
Joe:  I still have some friends with the "firm."  I did some work for them after I was discharged from the service.  One of them called me on a very friendly basis just as a friend.


BOSTROM:  What is the "firm?
Joe:  When you hear people involved in security; I'll let you in a little secret here.  They never call a certain agency of the government the company.  They like to call it - it's referred to as the "firm."  Again, what we were with was literally a front for that agencies military part which we are not supposed to have one of... it had one.  Recently there have been little leaks about that.  I did find out that a few weeks after we had our incident there were at least two more.


One of which, some fellows were pinned down and two of those little fellows stepped out of the woods.  One of them threw a small object out between them and the Phaphet Lao that had them pinned down.  They described it as a darkness grenade instead of a smoke grenade.  It put up enough of a partition of darkness that they were able to escape and they came back.  Regardless of how tight security is on a base like that everybody more or less sleeps in the same bed.  Many things get out.  These guys came back and immediately came down - what the hell did they do to you guys when you saw that thing and they went through the same procedure.  Recently I was talking to a good friend of mine who was in Thailand with the Air Force and we were talking about it and laughing about the fellow from the "firm" calling me and he said what happened when I told him and he looked at me and said, "Oh, you boys!" because he'd heard about the incident and people took it either with great hilarity - it was the funniest thing they had ever heard, or quite a few people were scared and we never did find out what Uncle Sam had determined about it. I can well imagine what they determined about it.  We were all on drugs or swamp gas but they never released that information to us.


BOSTROM:  Did you hear of any other cases like that in the region?
Joe:  There was quite a few.  They were always seeing them.  Even back in World War II in Burma.  They had the Foo Fighters.  Fellows kept seeing them follow along the aircraft.  The only thing I can say is whoever or whatever these humanoids are is they are very interested in our work here.


BOSTROM:  What did the guys that saw the smoke bomb say about the craft?
Joe:  They didn't see a craft.  All they saw was the fellows that we had seen - some of the smaller ones.
BOSTROM:  They just appeared there?
Joe:  They heard a noise out in the jungle and these two fellows came in and they heard it over the gunfire so evidently whatever it was - was very, very loud.  These fellows peeked out - looked around - looked at them and they see them clearly.  They turned to each other and whatever discussion they had- one of hem reached up and threw a small object and they said it was small enough - it couldn't be any smaller than a tennis ball and it went off with a loud pop.  Not an explosion but a pop.  It's just like dark gas.  It came up like smoke does but it was darkness and they looked at each other and said "what the hell is this? and one of them said, "I don't care, let's get out of here."  So they high-tailed it out.  It took the Phaphet Lao back far enough that they couldn't pursue them.  They never seen anything like that and never did we.


BOSTROM:  Did they take their clothes to check for residue?
Joe:  They'd done that several times.  They took our fatigues.  Other than that, one of the most interesting things about this - our memories were never exactly the same.  Whatever they did it altered our memories - affected it with great permanence, but there is no such thing as a total block.  Those things come in surges.  I know that up to that point in time, I've always been fascinated with the idea - had always want to believe in it, but never really saw enough that really made me believe that they're was any such thing. Whoever, or whatever, I'm convinced that they're not present populace of this earth?
BOSTROM:  You don't care about my recording this?
Joe: No, I have no problems with it at all.


FOOTNOTE:


Joe has returned to active duty with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

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