Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11 (31 page)

I have finally broken my silence, including admitting a murder, confident that the United States government will not come to Florida looking for the old man making these absurd statements. The true believers will discount my tale—part of me hopes they’ll label it “disinformation”—and the debunkers will reject it, too, because they didn’t think of it.

As I write this, a new millennium approaches, and Roswell, New Mexico, has three UFO museums (retired mortician Glenn Dennis is the president of the International UFO Museum & Research Center). The town of fifty thousand also has bus tours to various impact sites, and numerous shops selling T-shirts, dolls, puppets, spaceship earrings, bumper stickers and UFO hats. More than five million earth dollars a year, of late, have been pumped into Roswell, where its annual summer UFO celebration—with rock concert, “Best Alien” costume contest, laser light show and film festival—has attracted as many as 150,000 tourists. The town’s new motto: “Crash in Roswell.” No one seems to care about the space program anymore, that trip to the moon the Nazi scientists helped us make; we’re more interested in watching science-fiction movies on our Japanese-designed video equipment. But, of course, everybody’s interested in Roswell, and why not? Something strange happened there.

Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical (and/or geographical) inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of conflicting source material.

Of all the subjects I’ve chosen to explore to date in the Heller “memoirs,” the Roswell incident is perhaps the most written about, outdistancing even Amelia Earhart
(Flying Blind,
1998), Huey Long’s assassination
(Blood and Thunder,
1995) and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping
(Stolen Away,
1991). Whether this fact is remarkable or absurd, I leave to the reader’s judgment.

But—as with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart—books on this subject tend to display the bias of the authors/researchers. Many of the debunkers will accept no evidence tending toward extraterrestrial phenomena; many of the believers will accept any evidence. Both approaches are, as is obvious even to a B-biology student like me, bad science.

This does not deprive the best Roswell books of their entertainment value or make them less than worthwhile; it does demand that readers approach these works with a combination of skepticism and open-mindedness. I am prepared to be attacked by both sides, incidentally, because the theory expressed in this book is unlikely to be accepted by either the debunkers or the believers. And while I do not put this theory forth as anything more than a reasoned, reasonably informed alternative solution, it is a result of a trip down a research road fraught with the potholes of contradictory and frustrating evidence.

The best-known of the believers is probably my fellow Iowan Kevin Randle, and he alone of the pro-UFO crowd seems to make an attempt to hold the evidence to somewhat rigorous standards. He regularly revises his opinions, based on new facts, and has debunked some of his own star witnesses—a rarity in UFO circles. At this writing, Randle’s most recent thoughts on Roswell can be found in
The Randle Report
(1997); his earlier book-length works on the subject are
UFO Crash at Roswell
(1991, with Donald R. Schmitt) and
The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell
(1994, also with Schmitt). All three of Randle’s well-crafted books were useful in the writing of this novel.

Another pioneer (mentioned in the narrative), and the key defender of the Majestic Twelve documents, is nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, who contributed research to the first book-length work on the subject,
The Roswell Incident
(1980) by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore. Friedman’s books
Crash at Corona
(1992, 1997, written with Don Berliner) and
Top Secret/Majic
(1996) were extremely helpful to this project. Anyone interested in Roswell needs to read both Randle and Friedman.

Two excellent books that attempt, with some success, to debunk the incident are
The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Incident
(1997) by Philip J. Klass, and
The Roswell UFO Crash
(1997) by Kal K. Korff. These were vital sources in the writing of this novel, particularly useful in trying to sort through the muddled chronology of events (and supposed events), although the extent to which Klass and Korff disbelieve at times rivals the absurdity of the believers at their most naive. Incidentally, inconsistencies in the various Roswell authors’ chronology have been resolved in this book in favor of whatever the hell the narrative needed.

The Roswell File
(1997) by Tim Shawcross is the closest attempt I found to examine the incident in an objective fashion; while Shawcross appears to be in the believer camp, he presents negative evidence, which he discusses with an open mind, as opposed to the professional skepticism of Klass and Korff. A similar approach—but with a wider-ranging view of the UFO phenomenon—is taken by Jim Marrs in
Alien Agenda
(1997); and yet another objective look is provided by a former teacher of mine (at the University of Iowa in the early seventies), C.D.B. Bryan, in
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at MIT
(1995).

I relied heavily upon a wide-eyed believer’s account of the incident, the lavishly illustrated
Beyond Roswell
(1997) by Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle, which thoroughly explores Majestic Twelve and may be the most fun of any of these books, assembling a coherent narrative out of the various, sometimes incredibly dubious, evidence.
The Roswell Report: Case Closed
(1997) by Captain James McAndrew is the United States Air Force’s second published report on the incident, and was extremely useful, and less tainted by bias than the Klass and Korff books, but at the same time less credible, particularly considering that this is the government’s fourth official explanation of the incident.

Roswell articles I consulted include “Roswell or Bust” by Bruce Handy,
Time
(June 23, 1997); “50 Years After Roswell” by Dawn Stover,
Popular Science
(June 1997); and “Roswell—50 Years Later” by Jim Wilson,
Popular Mechanics
(July 1997)—the latter in particular helping me fine-tune my “solution.”
The Complete Roswell Encyclopedia,
a one-shot magazine published by Steve Harris, was another valuable resource. Various Internet articles, including Troy Taylor’s “The Lodge—Cloudcroft, New Mexico” (which details the legend of the hotel’s ghost), were helpful, as well.

In addition, I screened numerous Roswell documentaries (about half of which seemed to be hosted by Jonathan Frakes), including
Alien Autopsy (Fact or Fiction),
directed by Tom McGough and written by Robert Kiviat and Tom Seligson; and viewed the 1994 TV movie
Roswell,
an entertaining, somewhat fanciful adaptation by Arthur Kopit, Paul Davids and the film’s director, Jeremy Kagain, of the first Randle/Schmitt book; Forrestal is a secondary character in the melodrama, which hints that the former Secretary of Defense was murdered because he planned to tell the public about the aliens who were coming to invade the earth.

With very few exceptions, the characters in this novel appear with their real names, despite receiving varying degrees of fictionalization. A number of minor characters—Deputy Reynolds and Della Brown, for instance—are fictional but have one or more real-life counterparts. A liberty I’ve taken has been to have such witnesses as Glenn Dennis and Frank Kauffman—who did not come forward until many years later—discussing their experiences in 1949.

The romantic relationship between Glenn Dennis and Maria Selff is cited in many references, but—in more recent interviews, anyway—Dennis himself has begun to deny it. Furthermore, “Naomi Maria Selff”—which may be a Dennis-invented pseudonym for a woman whose existence some researchers doubt—is heavily fictionalized in this story. Perhaps the major liberty I’ve taken is depicting the nurse’s presence at Walker Air Force Base in 1949, when Glenn Dennis recalls her being transferred within days of the July 1947 incident. Dennis also claims that Selff was transferred to England and mail to her there was returned to him marked “deceased,” and that he was later told by mutual friends she had died in a plane crash. If Maria Selff actually ever existed—and researchers have for many years tried diligently to find her, or even proof of her existence—there is no evidence to suggest the intelligence work (or lively sex life, much less the violent death) I have invented for her in this novel has any basis in reality.

While Heller’s fictional interviews with Kaufmann, Dennis, and other witnesses such as Walter Haut and Frank Joyce are based upon actual interviews and statements these real people have given researchers over the years, their characterizations in the context of this novel should be viewed as fictionalized, and no negative reflection on any of these individuals is intended. There is, for example, no reason to think that Kaufmann in real life revealed the top-secret and/or classified material the fictionalized Kaufmann shares with Heller in this novel.

Dr. Joseph Bernstein is a fictional character, representing the very real influence and activities of Nazi scientists and doctors within the postwar U.S. government. In this novel Bernstein—in discussing patient Forrestal—occasionally utters sentiments similar to those spoken by Forrestal’s real psychiatrist, Dr. George Raines, who is not an onstage character in this book (though referred to); Bernstein is in no way a reflection of, or for that matter a fictionalized version of, Dr. Raines.

My portrayal of James Forrestal was influenced by two excellent biographies,
Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of
James Forrestal
(1992) by Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley; and
James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics and Policy
(1963) by Arnold A. Rogow.
Driven Patriot
provided much of the background used to develop my unflattering, but I hope sympathetic, portrait of Jo Forrestal. Also helpful were
The Death of James Forrestal
(1966) by Cornell Simpson, a conservative conspiracist’s take on Forrestal’s “murder” that provided many wonderful details unavailable elsewhere;
The Forrestal Diaries
(1951), edited by Walter Millis with the collaboration of E. S. Duffield;
James Forrestal
(1951) by Frank P. Leslie, an affectionate monograph by a Princeton classmate; and
Men of the Pentagon: From Forrestal to McNamara
(1966) by Carl W. Borklund.

My characterization of the perplexing Drew Pearson was drawn from material in numerous sources, including the first-rate, pro-Pearson
Drew Pearson: An Unauthorized Biography
(1973) by Oliver Pilat;
Drew Pearson: Diaries 1949—1959
(1974), edited by his stepson, Tyler Abell; and an anti-Pearson diatribe,
The Drew Pearson Story
(1967) by Frank Kluckhohn and Jay Franklin. Perhaps the most enlightening material, however, came from Jack Anderson’s wonderful
Confessions of a Muckraker
(1979, written with James Boyd), which of course influenced the (somewhat fictionalized) Anderson characterization in this book, as well.

The whimsical portrait of Teddy Kollek—which may have little to do with the real man—is nonetheless drawn from the following sources:
For Jerusalem: A Life
(1978) by Teddy Kollek with his son, Amos Kollek;
Every Spy a Prince
(1990) by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman;
Friends in Deed
(1994) by Yossi Melman;
Return to Zion
(1987) by Bodie Thoene; and numerous Internet articles.

My longtime collaborator, research associate George Hagenauer, searched out books and newspaper and magazine articles on topics including the Bethesda naval hospital, CIA mind control, the birth of Israel, the U.S. government’s recruitment of Nazis and much more; he also played advance scout, reading many of the Roswell books and sending me toward only the most worthwhile among them. Articles George uncovered included a 1942
Scientific American
article, “The Progress of Science—National Naval Medical Center” by Commander Frederick C. Greaves; “Citadel of Navy Medicine” by Sidney Shalett,
New York Times Magazine,
April 18, 1943; “Spare Parts of Human Bodies” by Milton MacKaye,
The Saturday Evening Post,
December 23, 1950; and “Pools of Healing,”
Time,
August 22, 1955. George, your engraved silver cup is in the mail (stay away from the windows).

Three other good friends helped with research matters: writer Joe Collins (no relation), who dug up material on V-2s and other experimental rocketry, and provided last-minute weapons training; booking detective Lynn Meyers, who located an elusive Forrestal monograph, among other things; and my right-hand man on my film
Mommy’s Day,
Steven Henke, who shared his research and thoughts relating to his own in-progress documentary on early rocketry (and the German scientists involved therein), not to mention providing a copy of the FBI’s annotated Majestic Twelve documents (every page is boldly marked “BOGUS”). Additional books that aided in the writing of this novel include
Blowback
(1988), Christopher Simpson;
Capitol Hill in Black and White
(1986), Robert Parker with Richard Rashke;
The Man Who Got Capone
(1976), Frank Spiering;
New Mexico: Off the Beaten Path
(1991), Todd Staats;
Operation Mind Control
(1978), Walter Bowart;
The Search for the “Manchurian
Candidate”
(1979), John Marks;
Smithsonian Guide to Historic America: The Desert States
(1990), Michael S. Durham;
Stuart Symington
(1960), Paul I. Wellman;
Trading with the Enemy
(1983), Charles Higham;
Treasury Agent
(1958), Andrew Tully;
Truman
(1992), David McCullough;
The United States Secret Service
(1961), Walter S. Bowen and Harry Edward Neal;
Virtual Government
(1997), Alex Constantine;
Washington Goes to War
(1988), David Brinkley;
Washington Lowdown
(1956), Larston D. Farrar;
Where I Stand
(1966), Hank Greenspun with Alex Pelle;
Winchell
(1971), Bob Thomas; and
World Without Cancer
(1974), G. Edward Griffin. As has often been the case in the past, various WPA Guides were extremely beneficial, specifically those for the District of Columbia (both the 1937 and 1942 versions) and New Mexico (1940). And I would especially like to acknowledge the lively
Washington Confidential
(1951) by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer.