- ..Somewhere about a mile into the Big Marsh, Muza heard
a whirring sound, "like a flock of wild birds," coming from above.
Separated from Muza by about 100 yards, the other boy watched in amazement
as a roughly 4-foot-diameter flying saucer slowly descended from about
100 feet to some 50 feet above Muza's head... full story
-
- Let not the title of this piece mislead you. The "attack"
in question came not from a raygun-wielding tentacle of some grotesque
alien-spacecraft crewmember bent on destroying his/her first contact upon
Planet Earth during that fateful twilight hour of Oct. 19, 1959, in a town
called Poquoson, near Langley Air Force Base, Va.
-
- No, it came from the trembling hands of a 12-gauge-shotgun-toting
15-year-old named Mark George Muza, Jr. He and his 14-year-old hunting
companion, Harold Moore, Jr., had ventured out that afternoon into an old
USAF restricted bombing range near their homes off Ridge Road. Somewhere
about a mile into the Big Marsh, Muza heard a whirring sound, "like
a flock of wild birds," coming from above. Separated from Muza by
about 100 yards, the other boy watched in amazement as a roughly 4-foot-diameter
flying saucer slowly descended from about 100 feet to some 50 feet above
Muza's head. At that point, the terrified youngster aimed his gun at the
craft and, over the course of about 90 seconds, pumped three shots into
it. All three blasts -- especially the third, heavy-duty "slug"
-- produced a ricochet that, to Muza, sounded as if metal were scraping
metal.
-
- Apparently unaccustomed to such a hostile greeting, the
saucer finally ceased its wobbly descent and proceeded to spin as a toy
top, zooming straight up, out of sight.
-
- That would've been "end of story" had not Muza's
mother called the local newspaper (the Newport News Daily Press).
-
- Complete with a photo of Muza holding his sketch of the
craft, the article published on Oct. 21st gave me the opportunity to visit
the site, to interview the two witnesses (and Muza's mother), and to publish
my own report on the incident. That report -- titled "From Poquoson
to Washington" -- lamented the fact that no-one at Langley had chosen
to investigate the case. The mimeographed report summarized a series of
correspondence between me, officials at Langley, certain Pentagon-based
USAF officials, a fellow researcher from Norfolk, and his congressman (Porter
Hardy, Jr.). You might say that, besides providing me a favored best-evidence
case for UFO reality, this confrontation with a recalcitrant officialdom
helped propel me upon a 42-year-long career as an activist for greater
freedom of UFO information. In retrospect, the Poquoson case has confirmed
what I and most privately funded researchers had suspected for years: the
Air Force's Project Blue Book of the 1952--1969 era operated as a thinly
disguised public-relations effort to downplay UFO-sighting reports, and
in the process to denigrate both UFO witnesses and UFO researchers whenever
the opportunity arose.
-
- Exactly where have I found that confirmation? It surfaced
in my recent visit to the U. S. National Archives annex in College Park,
Md. There, amongst the several dozen rolls of microfilmed Blue Book records,
lies the entire USAF case file on the Poquoson encounter (including a copy
of my entire 9-page report of Nov. 1, 1960). Here you'll find some of the
correspondence mentioned above -- as well as some revelatory official commentary
whose originators had assumed would never see the light of archival exposure.
Some excerpts:
-
- (1) From an OFFICIAL USE ONLY memo sent to HQ USAF spokesman
Maj. L. J. Tacker: "1. ... c. On 12 November 1959 a confidential source
provided this Directorate with a copy of an incomplete document entitled
"From Within the Blackout: An Analysis of Secrecy on the Local UFO
Scene," by Larry W. Bryant, director of the Air Research Group. 2.
Attached for your information is one copy of the above-cited document and
one copy of letter from Bryant dated 1 November 1959. The attachments are
for your retention. 3. No investigation is being conducted of subject by
this Directorate." [Signed by F. L. Welch, Assistant Chief, Counterintelligence
Div., Directorate of Special Investigations, the Inspector General.]
-
- (2) From a HQ USAF letter of May 20, 1960, to a staff
member of the House Committee on Science: "At your oral request, this
office has further investigated the Poquoson ... incident and the correspondence
relative thereto which has passed between this office and Congressman Hardy.
... you will note, as indicated in the newspaper article attached hereto,
that Mr. Bryant is a self-appointed authority on unidentified flying objects
and he, along with many others, considers himself entitled to be an unofficial
advisor to the USAF Intelligence community. ... Please note further that
the UFO detection device featured in the newspaper picture of Mr. Bryant
appears to be nothing more than a common doorbell connected to two dry
cell batteries. Mr. Bryant is evidently of the opinion that such a device
is cabable of supplying scientific proof that UFOs are flying objects from
outer space. Yet the Air Force has been unable to secure such evidence
utilizing its entire worldwide air defense radar network and the facilities
of the rest of the scientific community dedicated to satellite tracking."
-
- (3) From a June 9, 1960, Memorandum for Record (Subject:
UFO Sighting), written by Blue Book chief Maj. Robert Friend: "...3.
Mr. Larry W. Bryant, who reported the sighting to Langley AFB, was investigated
by OSI. Mr. Bryant was at one time employed in the Provost Marshal's Office
at Ft Monroe, Va., but due to his attitude and evidence that he was a poor
security risk, had been transferred to a less sensitive job at Ft Eustice
[sic], Va." [LWB comment: Besides his misspelling of Fort Eustis,
Friend has his facts wrong. My entry-level job at Monroe in May 1958 was
with the Adjutant General's section of the U. S. Continental Army Command.
It was through the good graces of the secretary to the commandant of the
U. S. Army Transportation School that I'd learned of the promotional potential
with a clerical vacancy there. I applied for the job, got selected, and
progressed into various other positions requiring appropriate security-clearance
updates. If by "evidence" Friend is referring to my monograph
"From Within the Blackout," then you can see how such a bunker
mentality helped spawn the intelligence-agency abuses of the sixties and
early seventies.]
-
- So much for the human drive to kill the messenger of
(UFOlogical) bad news. Throughout my civil service career, I came to expect
more of the same from those in authority who felt (and probably still feel)
that I had no right to point a finger at the Naked Emperor of official
UFO secrecy. (But to present all that history would take at least a book
or two.)
-
- Killing the messenger ranks high enough on the scale
of bureaucratic evil. But consider that the Blue Book gang also had no
compunction about killing the NEWS as well. They pulled off this feat of
legerdemain simply by discrediting, as much as possible, a given witness;
and the more extraordinary the story, the easier became the act of dismissing
it.
-
- In Muza and Moore's case, because of the congressional
pressure, the Langley-based "UFO investigation officer" (a Maj.
Paul Roberts) arranged to have them interrogated at separate times in May
1960. According to the (unnamed) interrogator's summary sheets, the boys'
accounts coincided too much. What's more, he concludes: "The publicity
brought about by the newspaper article made it necessary for them to prepare
a pat story and then stick to it to preserve face." (A tall order
for two teens from the tall marsh grass of Indian country!) What would
the investigator have concluded had the two accounts contained too many
variations? From this lose-lose situation, we now have this official dismissal
of the story, as entered upon the BB "Project 10073 Record Card":
"Investigators believe sighting to be a hoax."
-
- With the passage of time, Muza and Moore have had more
than one opportunity to recant. Back in 1983, for example, when reporter
Larry Bonko of the Norfolk, Va., Ledger-Star contacted Muza (then a police
detective for Newport News), Muza mused that he remembers the event as
if it happened yesterday. "I have no idea what I saw," he told
Bonko. Had he hoaxed the whole thing in a moment of youthful indiscretion,
he just as easily could've admitted that failing and moved on to non-history.
-
- And neither has he told any family member otherwise.
Several months ago, I tried to locate Muza for a follow-up interview. The
only Muza listed in the Peninsula phone book turned out to be his nephew,
who confirmed that Mark had stood by his story all these decades. Unfortunately,
as I learned from the nephew, Mark had died a few years ago -- a victim
of cancer, then in his mid-fifties.
-
- If anyone knows the whereabouts of Harold Moore, Jr.,
please let me know -- so that the resurgent echo of their story can be
heard 'round the world. For other LWB Chronicles, go to http://www.ufocity.com/search.php?query=lwb+chronicles&mid=7&action=showall
- With thanks to Larry W. Bryant
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