A revisit of one victim of "The Official Record" is begged...
Gray Is The Word...
UFO Magazine, September 2007
by Alfred Lehmberg
Major Jesse Marcel, principal made patsy at Roswell, is a clueless doof and blustering confabulator based on an "exhaustive" review of the "official record" according to one Robert Todd? Crap-cakes.
I'll have the whole story, thank you. A single spurious swag concerning tortured interpretational stretches of alleged facts, reader, is not remotely enough to sway this writer. Especially true, friends and neighbors, when what Mr. Todd cow-floppingly propounded about Jesse Marcel is an "ostensible" officiality only. That's right, ostensible, only. That's not enough to secure my agreement, enlist my support, or command my respect. Eyes askance. Arms akimbo.
To wit: Robert Todd's presumptive, ungracious, and line-crossing attack on Jesse Marcel is without validity, lacks sentience, and is finally a non-progressive journalistic profanity. In other words? Robert Todd's man of straw, additionally, had feet of clay.
Though, it remains Mr. Todd may presume the unquestioned veracity of 'official' records — even as these records have a strong potential for being flawed on many levels. I may discount the veracity of records which have that same strong potential for being flawed on many levels ... The reader sees how this works. Gravy for goose and gander should have a certain similarity or consistency beyond mere taste. Todd's overreaching and self-aggrandizement, therefore, shall not escape me.
Blithely, reader, and with a degree of uncalled for rancor... as if capering gleefully like a demented imp before that acrid-smelling bonfire made of a hero's memory... Todd propounded additional assumptions I would be cautious of at the least, and am, in fact, scandalized by!
See, Todd assumed a flawless integrity of "official government records," mind you, from that self-same government clearly riddled with a lack of critical oversight extant, anyway, and wasting millions of dollars every second to kickback, scandal, or gross inefficiency. That's before, during, and now, reader. I suspect all that's really beyond debate at this point. The Military recently lost track of ... trillions, was it? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, always.
Moreover! Todd assumed a lack of integrity, an abundance of gullibility, and the questionable mental health of anyone who suspects UFO's might be piloted by an *outside* intelligence, at all! He assumed interpretations of fact in a cold harsh light of a "black" or "white"... indeed casting more shadows than he is willing to admit, for, drowning in errant presumption, he allowed not the tinniest shade of ubiquitous gray to feature his misrepresentations. Let's explore that a little bit. Why?
Plainly, Todd's presumption is not remotely realistic then or now, follow? See? One has to allow gray, reader. It's required, essential, and logical. Everything is "gray," reader, Color, indeed, is just a more fully featured *gray* on infinity's color wheel.
Watch! Pure "black" and "white" is a myth, a fantasy — fulsome shadows on the walls of Plato's cave! The extreme outside rims of Bell curves. Personified, shape-shifting monsters themselves in actuality! They are Concepts and Ideologies not existing in a real world except as ideas!
Watch! There are different KINDS of even black and white in the real world, 180 degrees out from one another! Consider the "blacks" of a computer monitor against the "black" of a traditionally printed page. Consider the "whites" of same? ...Kind'a twists your head off, doesn't it! ...To get to the same place doing opposing things... curious at the very least!
Unmistakably! An informed and sensible or imaginatively flexible person acknowledges and appreciates "gray," reader! She has a gray *basket* that is expansive and open minded... friend. He is organized and objective whereas she is constructive and comprehensive, folks! Alternatively they are flexible, acceptable, and specific, fellows, and together are we not made more thoughtful with regard to an infinity of varied grays tinged only by every combination of an ultra/infra!
Gray, not grease, is the word.
Mr. Todd, as it turned out, will endure as none of the preceding! Indeed, he will be remembered, I suspect at best, as a kind of ufological Ptolemy, insisting on an Earth at an errant system's center! At worst?
He was a minor priest of a dark discipline and given to turgid and reactionary reductionisms — thoughtless supports of corrupted cultures. He was a facilitator of the passion destroying "information void..." ...like co-facilitator Kal K. Korff, a booster of the deceased Mr. Todd, without the remotest qualification, I add, but I digress, distastefully.
Coming up, then, is an example of the way our Mr. Todd worked. Revealed, reader, is the *wonder* that was Robert Todd's singular investigative acumen:
Let's say I unblinkingly report to you that I had "...more than 40 Air Medals," earned as an Army helicopter pilot flying combat missions in Vietnam circa 1970.
These "Air Medals" were awarded for aerial combat operations, ostensibly — though rules changing slightly (in interpretation) between units..., again, for all the procedures clearly outlined in awards and decorations regulations for the time... and from which our Mr. Todd's purloined a copy — considering it bosomed in non-errant stone! Anyway, these regulations established, generally, that for every 5 hours of combat flying, or every 25 hours of flying in direct combat support (my recollection now) an air-medal was "awarded."
My very sloppily kept official records of the time were maintained by the admin section of the 135th Assault Helicopter Company (EMU). This was a half Australian, half American aviation hybrid, an experimental unit engaged in daily combat directed operations since its inception. My very hastily maintained "official" records of this international aviation mash-up indicated that only one Air Medal was ever awarded! One!
Remember please that my documented hours flown in a combat zone are recorded to be 1086, and by definition the hours flown in a combat unit in a combat zone are "combat" hours or hours flown in "direct combat support." See how that works? ...Pretty cut and dried.
Flying ONLY in direct combat support would net 43 air medals, follow? I flew in combat, too, reader... I had more air-medals than 43... My *Official Records*; however, indicate only the one.
Ah-ha, Mr. Todd triumphantly concludes! His impish capering begins! Alfred Lehmberg, it is reported, is a craven liar, a person not to be trusted, a person without credibility, and a person beneath the concern, consideration, and contempt of all who behold him or remotely consider his explications and expressions! Whew!
CSICOPian darling... klasskurtxian commando, and Crap-shooting bastard! No respect for dead sons of bitches here. It's the evil lives on and on; the good is interred with bones, remember. Todd erred in judgment, spirit, and injuriousness. There should be consequences and the preceding is such.
Back to Todd, his unjustified and narrowly conceived character assassination begins in earnest, then, and is unrelenting for the remainder of his days. Forget that I EARNED over 40 air-medals by the freaking book! No, Todd's myopic and self-serving narrowness... his "square peg" forced into a "round hole"... his insistence on an inerrant "Black" and "White"... has inflated facts facile to begin with and scourged another otherwise spotless reputation! Why? For an unjustified feather in a simplistic klasskurtxian cap? He misrepresented the facts, such as they were, and spun them to discredit UFOs in the aggregate with his hatchet job on Marcel as a... confabulating boob.
But to the contrary! Major Jesse Marcel was a man handpicked from hundreds of qualified individuals for his courage, intelligence, and unblemished record; he was chosen to do a job of critical importance in the interests of the HIGHEST levels of a National Security, perhaps even justifiable at the time! Forget all that!
Robert Todd would! Robert Todd did!
Revealed, exactly what Robert Todd did to Jesse Marcel, reader, and a pelican-pumping "peanut-gallery" celebrates him for it, still! Todd thoroughly ignores the fact that Marcel's integrity, character, and reliability must have been appreciated quite highly at the TIME of his erstwhile paranormal involvement... as the top kick intelligence officer for the worlds ONLY aviation group capable of delivering the atomic bomb! That's right. Reader, do you think a cluelessly inexperienced doofus had the tiller on that very high-profile / high-visibility job? We're otherwise so fond of evoking a too often bowdlerized Occam, eh? Let's do it here!
As to criticizing *bravely* when Mr. Todd can't defend himself; that's so much klasskurtxian crap — shat sloppily slung at par! Let's count among the conflicted amongst you, shall we, who would criticize me for criticizing him. Step up!
There's no lack of defense, is there, against my presumed errant disparagement of the right honorable Mr. Todd's legacy such as it is? That *defense* would be, I submit, Todd's aforementioned evil living on and on, remember. No apologies here.
By the way... that son of Jesse Marcel alluded to earlier? ...Active Army Bird Colonel, Aviator, Medical Doctor, and a military flight surgeon, just returned from combat operations in Iraq! He held a bit of starship in his hands, too, perhaps. He's written a book in that regard, in consideration of his "hero" father, and in consideration of the truth; a truth though heavens fall!
Perhaps some of the damage can then be repaired. Perhaps destiny is to make a true hero of Jesse Marcel, once again. Perhaps some good lives on after all.
Restore John Ford... and Jesse Marcel! Read on!
