Project Blue Book Socorro file

## REPORT ON SOCORRO NEW MEXICO TRIP

On Tuesday, April 28, 1964, in response to a call from Captain Quintanilla, I enplaned for Albuquerque to meet with Major Conner of Kirtland Air Force Base and associates. I called a prospective graduate student in astronomy, now working at Kirtland Air Force Base, before I left the office, asking him to meet me. This proved totally unnecessary since, when the plane from Denver arrived in Albuquerque, I heard some mummurs from the front part of the plane to the effect that "there must be a celebrity aboard" and discovered to my amazement that, as I left the plane, numerous flashbulbs began popping, and I was importuned for one interview after another. Since I knew nothing, there was very little that I could say, and consequently I got out of the situation very easily. It would appear that Major Conner's PIO man was very effective. I had unfortunately neglected to ask Major Conner in advance to keep things quiet.

As soon as I got the reporters out of my hair, we went to Major Conner's office at Kirtland Air Force Base, where I called Dr LaPaz by phone to ask whether he might go down to Socorro with us. He was unable to make it, but told me that a number of a years before he had worked with Zamora on a field trip in search of a fallen meteorite. He gave Zamora a very clean bill of health and said that he was a completely reliable person. We then headed down in an Air Force car for Socorro, which is some 75 miles south of Albuquerque, and when we were nearly there, we had a flat tire. It turned out that the jack was missing, although the car had been reported in excellent shape, and so we had to hail passers-by, finally snagging one car whose occupants indicated that they would inform the sheriff's office when they got into town. Time passed and we snagged another car, this time with four women in it. They took me into town so that I could relay the call, and this was rather fortunate, all in all, because I had the chance to have a preliminary with Sergeant Chaves before the rest (Major Conner and Mr James Wray, the prospective graduate student) got down. It was during this preliminary interview in the jail that Sergeant Chaves told me that Zamora was getting disgusted with the whole thing and with the general misrepresentation he was the victim of. After some general reluctance, Sergeant Chaves agreed to have Zamora there that evening after dinner, provided that Zamora and he could talk to me privately. I agreed to this, and when the repaired car finally got down with its occupants, we went to dinner (paid for all the meals of the two from Albuquerque both this day and the next), and after dinner, Major Conner and Mr Wray went back to Albuquerque, and I went to the jail to talk for the next two hours with Zamora and Chaves.

After a fairly lengthy time spent in getting them warmed up to the subject, I got the major sketch of the situation. During one or two times when Zamora (who was on duty) had to step out of the room, Chaves told me of some of Zamora's reactions. Apparently Zamora was not going to say any- thing about it, but it was at Chaves' advice that he did. He then apparently