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This 217-page Project Blue Book desk file on the 24 April 1964 Socorro, New Mexico sighting by policeman Lonnie Zamora comes from the Rob Mercer collection. It contains the Blue Book record card, which carries the case as unidentified pending more data, along with Foreign Technology Division messages and resumes and a narrative of the sighting. It also holds inquiries about lunar modules, helicopters and VTOL craft, soil and radiation findings, and a letter by J. Allen Hynek rejecting Donald Menzel's hoax hypothesis.
“New Mexico State Police”20 pages
8 have it analy~ed and found it radioactive! I have also obtained some of the sap which I shall send to you) and· rmybe Moody can try it out on his · super-duper counter. It is odd that no one seemed to have bothered to have checked this area originally for radiation. Or did they? Menzel 's· idea that the speedetft was a deliberate decoy, who signaled to the hoaxes by walkie-talkie who then released a balloon with a cardboard or aluminum flying saucer attached thereto simply do~s not hold water. Although some of the students do have walkie-talkies, the fact of the matter is that whe wind was from the southland t he object went west. A balloon released at that time would have gone directly over town. ·.t ·Furthermore, they would have had to rel ease!after .&anora got there and ~·~watched the object on the ground for a short time • . A previous release would simply have had it well over town by the time zamora got to the spot. The dynamite shack does not have legs. There l:k would have been a place for hoaxes to have llidden over on the other side of the knoll, particularly had they lain prone~ uN1ne of the people I talked with gave any credence to the hoax hypothesis, generally considering it to have been far above the capabilities ~, motiva- tions, and provocation~ of the hoaxers. Chaves says that Zamora never described the thing as looking like a baJLoon. Zamora knows exactly where the dynamite shack is. It is pdainly visible from the site of the sighting , but about 500 feet to the west. Zamora does not have any particular schedule for patrolling the town. He has the run of the whole town. There is no UFto Club _in town. No paraphernalia of ~ a hoax were ever found. It would be rather hard to have done away with all tell-tale evidence, such as tubes of heliu ~ , release IRob Mercer
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 217 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.