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5. the Saucer Spins

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5. the Saucer Spins 5. The Saucer Spins DESPITE AN ENCOUNTER WITH NINE SPACE SAUCERS AND A new-found global celebrity, Kenneth Arnold had not yet experienced weird- ness, at least not the depth of the weirdness that his investigation of the Maury Island event ultimately would bring. Next came his second UFO en- counter in the Callair single engine. He took off on July 29 at 5:30 in the morning, with a fuel tank only partly full, for a stop to refuel in LeGrande, Oregon. He also had business there, and then he planned to go on to Tacoma to talk to Crisman and Dahl. Arnold tilted the Callairs wings to acknowledge an Empire Airlines Boeing plane over Baker, Oregon on his right. As he did so, he witnessed a dozen more saucers ying in a formation like those over Mt. Rainier. He grabbed his $150 movie camera with the telescopic lens and got some footage before the speeding objects, only 400 yards away, disappeared. When he had the lm developed, however, it showed only small dots. As he watched this new formation, Arnold realized that the smallness of the craft distinguished them from the Mt. Rainier group. These saucers measured no longer than 30 inches in diameter. Their speed and proximity kept Arnold from dismissing them as a ock of ducks or geese. The size was more signicant than Arnold realized. An object measur- ing 30.5 inches that looked similar to the cymbals used by a drummer in a band, placed face to face had been recovered two weeks earlier by Mrs. Fred Easterbrook in Twin Falls, Idaho. Mrs. Eastbrook turned it over to an FBI agent named W. G. Banister. The gadget is gold plated on one side and ���� silver, stainless steel, aluminum or tin on the other, reported the Tacoma paper, which used only Banister as the source.(1) The ����st Oregonian had covered the story of the two-and-half foot saucer and noted that assistant chief of Twin Falls police E. McCracken said that army intelligence authori- ties had ordered his department not to talk about the mini-saucer. The object was taken into a back room at the police station and put under lock and key, said McCracken. We were told to keep our mouths shut, and not describe the object to anyone.(2)All reference to these strong-arm tactics was left out of the next East Oregonian report, as were the names of the four boys that assistant chief McCracken claimed had made the disk from parts of an old phonograph.(3) A clear pattern of cover-up can be seen in the newspaper record of this sighting. Moreover, the involvement of FBI agent W. G. Guy Banister estab- lished a distant rst link between the Maury Island incident and the assas- sination of John F. Kennedy. Banister emerged during the investigation of the JFK murder by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, but also previously had been investigated by the Warren Commission. By that time, Banister ran a detective agency in New Orleans, Guy Banister Associates, at 531 Lafayette. The building had a second entrance at 544 Camp Street, which housed an anti-Castro group created by future Watergaters Bernard Barker and E. Howard Hunt, called the Cuban Revolutionary Council. The Warren Commission determined that Lee Harvey Oswald used the 544 Camp Street as the ofce address of the ostensibly pro-Castro Fair Play For Cuba Committee, and printed it on his Hands Off Cuba yers in 1963. After his death, Banisters widow found Fair Play for Cuba literature at Banisters Lafayette street ofce. Banister also employed as an investiga- tor the albino pilot and Oswald acquaintance David Ferrie. Both Banister and Ferrie were gun runners for the Bay of Pigs. Banisters associates includ- ed Maa and right-wing extremist groups like the World Anti-Communist League; he also once worked in the Chicago FBI ofce with Robert Maheu, a consultant to Howard Hughes who planned murder plots against Castro.(4) Banister hired men like Ferrie to do grunt investigative work while he pursued intrigue among political groups. Some of his informants supplied him with information on leftist student groups at nearby Tulane and Louisi- 42 ana State universities, while he published strident anti-communist newslet- ters like Louisiana Intelligence Digest. Banister also worked as Louisiana coordinator for the Minutemen, an early militia group with a membership that included a pastor whose brother would later claim to have witnessed the Maury Island event.(5)The Warren Commission had looked into an incident involving one of Banisters investigators, Jack Martin, who was beaten by Banister with a .357 Magnum a few hours after JFK was shot. Apparently a drunk Banister was nervous that Martin would expose to authorities the role planned for David Ferrie as pilot for the conspirators getaway plane.(6) That Banister enjoyed his double life in law enforcement and criminal conspiracy was made explicit when he testied before the Louisiana Joint Leg- islative Committee in March 1957 about his decision to move to New Orleans: I had retired, intending to get out of law enforcement, although I must say I regretted getting out of counter-espionage, counter-sabotage, counter-subver- sive activity work. It is a fascinating eld.(7)He also gave that committee yet another view of the 30 inch disk he was given in July 1947, which the police identied to the newspaper as a childrens prank: Do you remember the Japa- nese balloon cases that occurred in World War II? Balloons being sent over from Japan? We found the rst one on land in Montana [sic; Banister worked for the headquarters of the Montana-Idaho FBI division in Butte, Montana], and I had the job of nding out where it came from. It came through the air, although a leading balloonist in this country said no balloon could y such a distance. But military geologythat branch of military services which we havein time began to chart the exact strata in Japan they came from, be- cause they had sand bags on them, you remember. And we found out the reason why. The winds carrying these balloons originated in Siberia. We call them now the jet air streams. They can ride one out eastward toward us. Off the coast they strike one going much faster, almost twice as fast, turning south. They can ride that until they cross another going eastward at about 350 miles per hour. It quite frequently passes over New Orleans, and they can ride it down. They can be here quicker than they can get to Chicago. (8) Interestingly, the Japanese Fugo balloon bomb is one of three balloon theories that have been used to explain the Roswell event, one championed by writer John Keel but challenged by many others.(9) 43 Certainly the vision of 20-plus small disks that Kenneth Arnold saw as he traveled to meet with Crisman and Dahl was not a formation of Fugo balloons. After he made his refueling stop, Arnold called Dave Johnson, who was happy to get the scoop of the new sighting by Arnold for the Idaho States- man. After the call, Johnson called Emil Smith to let him in on Arnolds investigation of the Maury Island incident. A suspicious Smith complained that he had learned that Arnold had attached his name to the July 12 state- ment connecting the UFOs to atomic energy. His suspicions were assuaged as Johnson reiterated his feelings about Arnolds basic honesty. Meanwhile, Arnold attempted to nd lodging from the Sky Har- bor airport where he landed at Chehalis, Washington. Conventions were keeping the hotel No Vacancy signs lit, but Arnold surprisingly found a room at the Linnard-Western Winthrop Hotelreserved already in his name! Because of the scarcity of rooms he had discovered from phone calls, Arnold hopped on the airports shuttle service and grabbed room 502, a double with bath, before he could gure out how it came to be his. He had not made the reservation. By the time he reached the Winthrop, the clerk he had spoken with on the phone was off work and could not be reached. Arnolds attempt to uncover the Maury Island mystery kept sink- ing it more and more into mystery. The pilot picked up the phone book and looked up Dahl. The phone book contained almost forty Dahls. He dialed the H.A. Dahl listing, Proc- tor 7116, an exchange in the citys north, and it turned out to be a good guess. Harold Dahl answered, and upon realizing he was talking to UFO celebrity Kenneth Arnold, he told him to back-off of the investigation and return home. Dahl was still smarting from his contact with the Man In Black and the sub- sequent misfortunes of his family and business. He explained that the news- papers refused to listen to his story, that he was not anxious to involve police or military authorities, and that his superior Fred Crisman had made the rst overtures to Ray Palmer. Arnolds characteristic all-American honesty and sense of urgency about the truth did nally succeed, after about a half- hour of stalling, in getting Dahl to agree to come to the hotel. Dahl gave Arnold the basics of his UFO experience in the waters around Maury Island. He deferred questions about his employment to Fred Crisman, 44 who he suggested could come by the following day. He again suggested that Arnold forget about it and go home. When Arnold asked him about the son who had sustained an injury after the encounter, Dahl told him about how the boy had disappeared and then gave all the details about his encounter with the Man In Black.
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