|
1,300 SOLDIERS ABDUCTED
AT
FORT BENNING, GEORGIA,
USA -
2ND SEPTEMBER 1977
UFO
Magazine [UK] ---- May/June 1998
John
Vasquez interviewed by Graham Birdsall.
(GWB)
Graham
Birdsall was editor of the UK's 'UFO
Magazine'.
Few
among the hundreds present at Laughlin had
ever come
across a UFO witness by the name of John
Vasquez
before, myself included. John was not a
speaker there, nor an
established and recognised researcher. He
had travelled from
his home in California to seek help and
advice on a
matter of great personal concern. A select
few researchers
attended a private meeting, at which John
related one of the
most extraordinary incidents any of us had
come
across in years.
The
mass abduction of an entire battalion of
some
1,300 military personnel.
The
next day John kindly agreed to re-tell his
story again on
camera for inclusion in our new video
magazine series.
'UFOs: Hard Evidence.' I began by asking
John why he had
travelled several hundreds of miles to
seek out UFO
researchers...
"What I'm trying to do is convey reports
and documents
concerning Army intelligence at Ft. Mead,
Maryland, and also
my investigative report: letters from all
the Army and Air
Force departments concerning UFOs, or a
'J.A.W.S."
test, an acronym for Joint Attack Weapons
Systems and also
a mysterious outbreak of measles at Ft.
Benning,
Georgia."
John
then began to re-live an event which he
said came "as
a surprise to all of us". "It just
happened. We were very
frightened of this unusual light.
This was a mass
parade formation. There was 1,300
people."
Where was this exactly?
"This was at the 1st A.I.T. (Army Infantry
Training) Battalion
post, it was a combat training group,
infantrymen. We're talking
right now about September 2nd, 1977. I
know it sounds really
wild, but I started investigating this
whole event in '91. And
slowly I conducted my own personal
investigation into this
event at Ft. Benning. I've been Finding a
lot of documents and
quotes concerning an unusual event at Ft.
Benning,
because we had the Secretary of the Army,
Clifford
Alexander being present, at Ft. Benning.
"Normally it would have been someone from
the Chiefs of
Staff, a four-star general evaluating this
JAWS test. And, I do
have a JAWS test document at this time.
It's written by the
air force and I have the letter from
them." [I did indeed see
this letter and it was recorded on film -
GWB]
THE EVENT
"It
was an evening parade. There were
thirteen-hundred men. We
had to account for the staff and captains
and XO's [executive
officers]. We were standing in formation
and somebody in front of
me mentioned something in the sky and I
didn't think nothing of
it because I was just looking at stars. So
I said. "What is it'?" The
guy in front of me said. 'Just keep
looking'. So I did and all of a
sudden this star moved, in a gradual,
floating way. I thought it
was a satellite. This sergeant, who was
standing behind me
asked, 'What do you think it is?' I
just said, 'Satellite'.
"All
of a sudden, this star just stopped, and
then it moved away
from us; came back and it moved again,
stopped and
moved away again, came back, and continued
on. At this
time, the same sergeant ordered us to
stand to attention, and you
can't move at all then. But I kinda
glanced up to see
where this thing went, and it was gone.
"And
this is when the captain, our captain of
Delta Company, 1st
Battalion, 1st Infantry, was walking out
of this building to make
a speech. And this speech was to advise us
of our 6-8
week training course. Just when he
was walking to this
podium to make his speech, I heard this
"rushing' noise and I
leaned back and looked across, to my left.
I saw this bright
light, an intense bright light. I thought
it was a jeep, a truck or
something. And it was moving across,
slowly.
THE SLEEP
"I
saw some of Charlie Company's men running
out of their
formation, others were standing still. So
I needed to take a better look
at this. I leaned forward. When I leaned
forward this bright
light just got really close and it was
headed between the tree-lines. And
I still thought it was a truck, but the
light was really, really
intense. I mean, it's a white, bright
light, and it had this bluish
outline to it.
"I
looked at this thing and I thought, 'I
don't know what this is'.
Well, the guy who was standing in front of
me, I wanted to say
something to him, ask him what it was, but
when I looked at him, he
was asleep. His head was bowed, his eyes
were closed, he was
asleep. So I leaned back again, I don't
know what happened
here, but I was unconscious for a few
minutes.
"When I came to, I was looking down and I
couldn't move. I
couldn't move my feet. And I tried
desperately to move from
where I was standing. The next thing I
did, I could move my
upper body, so I turned to my right, and I
saw some of the men
running to the tree-lines and others were
diving underneath the
buildings, a two-storey-high cross-way,
such as you see in
the picture [left].
"My
buddy Alan... running, they were all
running. So I just cried out
for Alan to come back and help me because
I couldn't move. He
came back and he pulled me physically from
where I was
standing, physically pulled me. He pulled
my arm and I sort of
'jumped' from where I was standing.
"He
was saying, 'Take cover! Take cover!'
and I was asking,
'What's going on here?' you know ?
There was something
happening and it was happening fast.
I told Alan, 'I want to see
the captain', so we ran over to where the
captain was and he
was standing behind this podium. And he
was asleep. His head
was bowed and he wasn't moving.
"So
I screamed. I screamed, "Wake up!' out
loud. I mean, I
screamed so loud I think everybody could
have woke up. But
there was a lot of guys still standing
around in this
formation and it was like they were
motionless. The
captain didn't wake up.
'TAKE COVER!"
"So
about this time, Alan was turned around
and is facing this
thing, this light. I believe it was a
light. And his face was really pale. I
mean it's like he's just seen a ghost. His
eyes were bulging and his
jaw was open and I shook him. I told him,
'Don't look at it!
Don't look at it!'. And he sort of came to
and he was saying,
'What's going on', like he was really
confused.
"And
we started to run, and when we started
running to this
first building, on the cross-base
underneath, there was something
moving and we didn't know what it was. So
I told Alan to wait, get
ready for it, we didn't know what it was.
We'd seen the shadows
moving underneath the building, and we're
going to physically hurl
this thing. Well it was one of us.
"He
was coming out of the crawl space there
and he was asking,
'What's going on'. 'What's going on?'
We said, 'The captain's
asleep! The captain's asleep!' And I
guess there were some more
there 'cos he turned his head and said
'The captain's asleep!'.
"So,
we told him, 'Just take cover, get away
from it!' And me and Alan
started to run again and the guy crawled
away from us. We came
to this second building and at the far end
of the barracks, it's
a two-storey barracks. We heard some guys
under there, they
were calling our last names so we ran over
there.
"We
dove under this cross-face and we started
arguing about what
was going on. We couldn't believe things
were happening this
quick, but this is our reaction, in a
hostile manner, because when
something like this happens, you know,
when people get
excited over things...
"MOMMY!"
"Then we saw Sgt. Santini come out from
the first building that
Alan and I had just crossed. And this ball
of white light, from
50ft, we were laying down. It looked like
the size of a
melon, a small melon. But it was a bright,
white light and it
wasn't a tracer, 'cos I know, I've seen
tracers before, I've
fired my M16's and I know what tracers
look like.
"But
this wasn't a tracer. It sort of came from
the second storey, and
sort of 'roller-coasted' down to Sgt.
Santini's height. And Sgt.
Santini's about 5 feel 11 inches, 6 foot,
and he was waving his arms up
and down, screaming about what's going on,
telling us to take
cover and cursing the sky, because
something was coming down.
"And
he started to run and he disappeared in
the second building. And
this bright light just sort of
'roller-coasted' down to his height and
zipped across - then it disappeared. And
the next thing we
heard was a "slap" and a 'thump'.
"And
one of us, Hackett, crawled over to the
other side to see
where Sgt. Santini was and he was "out" on
the pavement. He
didn't move. Apparently he was knocked out
or something.
Something hit him.
"When Hackett came back, this is when we
started hearing the
screaming. From Alpha Company, all the way
down to Bravo, then to
Charlie Company and to Delta. When it came
to Delta Company, we
heard somebody out in parade formation
screaming.
"'Mommy!', a high-pitched scream
that went down to a grunting sort
of scream. I can still hear it when
I talk about this, I mean, you
hear a man screaming like that you know
something's wrong.
"And
I told Jones, who was sitting, laying next
to me, I said we
should go out there and help these guys
because something's
going on out there. But he just turned
around and said, 'No,
they're already dead, forget about it'.
"IT'S COMING OUR WAY!"
"We
started arguing again about these, we
started arguing about
where the M16's were and where the ammo'
was. We were gonna'
start deploying some of our defence
tactics."
To defend yourselves?
"Yeah. And I told Alan, whatever happens,
just try to go back
to the Main Post and get some help. I was
going to stay
behind with Jones and Hackett.
"Well, during that argument we were
having, we had one of the guys
crawl over and we asked him what was going
on out there. And
he said "It's lights'. We looked at
each other as though to say:
'Lights? What kind of lights? Strange
lights, what?'
"This was more intense light. I mean the
whole place just lit, like
it was day. And the windows, on the
barrack buildings,
these old windows and the frame and
everything on the
building itself, silhouetted. The light
just silhouetted the
whole thing, just weird, it was really
weird.
"Just moving across slowly, across the
second storey coming
around, and we could see the guys in front
of us underneath the
building and we started pounding the
ground and calling their
names out, calling them out to get away
from that thing, but they
didn't move.
"So
we just kept coming around and by the time
this bright
light came to the corner edge, I looked
into it, I sort of "fixed"
myself into this. And I don't know what it
was, but it was like
looking into one of those searchlights,
right inside. And I
guess I was hypnotized into watching this
and Alan was
grabbing my arm and shouting. "What is it
Vasquez?", and
I said, 'I don't know, but it's coming our
way'."
Vasquez then described how he began to
hear a 'voice' in
his head. He looked down on the ground and
saw a small
frightened animal, which he labelled a
'possum'. He said he
heard the animal ask, 'What is it?' and he
answered back, 'I
don't know'. His puzzled colleagues looked
at him, saw the
animal dart away and asked: 'Who are you
talking to
Vasquez?" He told them.
"Hackett, he's a native American, he told
me: 'You
know, you speak to Nature'.
"COME OUT"
"I
don't know, everything strange was
happening. And this
bright light, it was so bright that
underneath the building you
could see the pipes, the boards, you could
see everything. The
whole place was illuminated. Everybody was
afraid, and
so was I. You know, honest, we're scared
of this light, like
little kids hiding in a comer.
"By
this time I hear this voice, this echo
sounded sort of far away
and metallic-like, and it's telling me.
'It's OK, don't be afraid. come
out'. Well, I didn't know who said
that and I asked all the guys
underneath, 'Who said it's OK?
Who's saying it's OK?' And
all the guys are looking at me, like,
'Where are you
hearing this from Vasquez?'"
Vasquez told his friends that he kept
hearing a voice telling him it
was OK to come out. They crawled away from
him, because they
hadn't heard it. He told them to move
towards the centre of the
building, away from the light, and that he
intended to go out and see
for himself what was going on. Vasquez
crawled out from
underneath the building and headed for a
grassy moll.
"I
stood up and I looked to my left, and this
bright,
shiny, intense bright light was sitting in
front of me. I
saw this shadowy figure, kind of a little
figure,
scurry back into the light.
---------------------
"I was told to keep my eyes closed
throughout this time and the next
thing that happened I heard this
female voice ask, 'Do you remember?'
----------------------
"I
didn't know what that was, but when I
lifted my left hand to
shield the glare from this bright light,
something hit my left
shoulder, and it sounded like a fuse being
blown. I go down, I
reach with my hand for my friend. Hackett,
and Hackett's
screaming my last name, and I was reaching
for him, but
something else hit my back and I became
unconscious.
RECOLLECTIONS
"What I remember from here is that someone
was telling me to keep
my eyes closed. And I felt there was one
person on my left,
another person on my right. There was a
cover over me and I was
being lifted. My whole body felt tingly,
real tingly, and the next thing that
happened is a quick motion of two people,
coming across my left
and turning in unison and moving across,
away from me and
really fast.
"I
was told to keep my eyes closed throughout
this time and the next
thing that happened. I heard this female
voice ask. 'Do you
remember?" And I said. 'Remember what?'
And I didn't say a
word. It was all mental communication.
"And
when she heard me say, 'Remember what?'. I
felt this deep
concern come over her. Deep concern, like
there was something
wrong. The next thing. I had this physical
exam, and after I was
looking at this wall, and on the wall
there was an insignia of some
sort, a half-moon and a zig-zag of some
sort."
Vasquez pulled a neck bracelet out from
underneath his
shirt collar. Here was the self-same
design that he had
crafted from memory and wore at all times.
VISIONS
And
when I turned my head, I saw rows of men
lying on a
slab. At the 5th or 6th table, there were
two things standing in
back of me, and within just a split
second, she just said, 'Got
to sleep', and I did. The next thing
I remember, this guy, I
have to say it's a guy because I felt this
was a male, he kept
demanding for me to keep looking at his
eyes. And I didn't want
to. I just didn't want to look at him
because he
scared me.
"And
he said, 'There's nothing to be
afraid...', or something like
that. "Don't be afraid". And he kept
demanding for me to look
at his eyes. And I said, 'Only if it's
going to help'. And he
said, 'It will help'. I looked in his eyes
and there were three
images that I saw. One was myself,
standing in an ocean, blue
sky, and I'm standing in an ocean by
myself.
"The
other one was seeing a picture of the
whole Earth being
destroyed, coming apart, little by little.
And the other one was an
image of a human face, a pale, paste-white
face, with a pupil like
liquid mercury. And that's all I saw. I
saw this face again. I
became unconscious. The next thing I
remember is that all of
us were back in formation, everyone of us.
SELF-EXAMINATION
"All
of us are back in formation in line, but I
remember that Alan and
I were standing at the 2nd line, but we'd
come back to the 4th
line. We were all disorientated. It's
like... it felt like we'd drank 50
gallons of beer, because we were kind of
weaving back and forth. And
so was Alan, and so was everybody else.
"We
did what you'd call. I guess, our own
personal examination. 'How
are we doing?' A lot of us were very
disorientated, didn't know
what was going on. I looked across and
I saw Sgt. Turner, who
was standing there in his summer uniform,
parade dress. He
had all his medals on, I thought that he
had spilled coffee on his
trousers, but apparently he had had an
'accident'. He
cursed and walked away.
"We
were told to go back to our barracks by
Sgt. Newkirk, and I
was wondering, 'Hey, we didn't have a
speech from the captain yet.
What happened to our speech?" Well, we
never had a speech and
we started walking back, and some of us
started falling down. We
lost balance and I fell down too because
everything was
spinning, and that was unusual. And
when I got up I started to walk
away.
"Some of the people, some of the guys
who'd been in formation,
started getting sick, started vomiting,
getting sick, falling down, like
we lost all control of balance. When I
came to the first building, I
stopped and I looked at my watch. And my
watch stopped at 7.40. I
asked Jones, who was standing next to me,
what time he had and
he said he had 3.30. And he asked his
friend who was standing
right by, he said it was 4.45. All of our
watches stopped.
"I
got sick then. I got real sick. I don't
know why, but I got back to
my barracks and there were guys in there
acting real odd, like some
kind of drug-induced state or whatever.
But they were
acting really weird. Alan was sitting on
his bed, gazing at the
wall, it was like, he was "gone".
"I
opened up my locker, and I was about to
take my shirt off, when
I noticed my shirt was unbuttoned at the
top, my trousers
button were open. But the funny thing is
that my boots, the
combat boots that you wear have eight
holes. Well, it was laced
through the fourth one and it came to a
large, criss-cross at the end,
and a sort of bow-tie.
"And
I told myself, 'I know I didn't go out
there like that... I
know I didn't do this'. Because the
drill sergeant would have said
something, he would have been the first to
scream and yell and
say. 'What are you doing out here like
this Vasquez?'
"Well, I told myself, 'I know I didn't do
this', so I started changing my
clothes, taking my clothes off, my
trousers, and I found like a
paste-glue, around my trousers. I wiped
that off and wiped it off
myself too. I don't know what that was".
A CHAIN OF EVENTS
John
Vasquez then told me how he had begun to
recall most of
what had transpired at Ft. Benning over a
decade later in 1989.
As
his memory slowly resumed, he began to
research and
investigate the strange happenings in
1991, beginning with a
request for San Diego-based US Congressman
Cunningham, to
instigate an official inquiry on his
behalf. The Congressman
wrote to the US Army's National Personnel
Records Centre in St.
Louis, Missouri, requesting John's
military file, known as a
'201'.
They
wrote back stating that some documents
pertaining to
Vasquez's military career were missing,
but crucially, they
claimed to have no records of Vasquez
having served at or
visited Ft. Benning, either in a full or
temporary capacity.
Vasquez immediately set about the task of
discovering the truth
about what he and his fellow colleagues
experienced that fateful day.
Using his own money, he single-handedly
wrote to the USAF, the
US Army, the Joint Chief's press office,
Ft. Sam Houston in
Texas, the President's office and the
Vice-President's office.
He
also contacted numerous other departments,
including
health departments and the Surgeon
General's office. Vasquez
wrote to the latter because on sifting
through local newspapers of
the time, he discovered one whose headline
shot off the page:
"Measles Outbreak Strikes Post's Troops"
It
was referring to a reported outbreak of
measles at Ft. Benning. More
to the point, they were referring to his
battalion, 1st Battalion, 15th
Infantry.
Other health departments had previously
advised Vasquez to
contact the Walter Reid Medical Center in
Washington D.C., who
should have had details about the
outbreak. He corresponded with
a Dr. Rugal. Ph.D., who. on reading copies
of the newspaper
reports concerned, wrote back and said:
"This is an unusual
outbreak. There are no records."
Dr.
Rugal told Vasquez that his main concern
was that Walter Reid
never sent a medical team to study the
supposed outbreak, some
thing they would have been automatically
required to do had
it been genuine. "We should have," wrote
Dr. Rugal,
"it's a whole battalion."
Another local newspaper at the time made
mention of the fact
that a JAWS test had been conducted at Ft.
Benning.
---------------------------
PHOTOGRAPHS OF TWO LETTERS/FORMS:
These hitherto classified UFO documents,
derived from our extensive files, suddenly
open
up new avenues for research into the
interesting aspect of psychological
warfare
and
the role of Ft. Meade.
----------------------------
FRAYED NERVES?
On
23 October 1997, John Vasquez received a
response to an
inquiry made to the Joint Staff Panel.
They maintained no
knowledge of a JAWS test having ever been
conducted at Ft.
Benning. This was reiterated in similar
fashion from officials at
Ft. Benning itself, and Ft. Meade. But
Vasquez had already
received written confirmation from the
USAF that a JAWS test had
indeed been conducted at the base in
question.
That
document, which I have seen (and was
recorded on
camera), is now the focus of some
considerable attention.
Vasquez has been told that the document is
no longer available to
the public, that anyone requesting it will
be denied, even through a
Freedom of Information Act request. He has
also been discreetly
contacted by telephone. A USAF official
asked: "Can we please have
our 'JAWS' document back?"
In
return, the official offered to provide
Vasquez with 300 UFO
documents. How old they were and what
relevance they had, was
anyone's guess, but some, Vasquez was
told, referred to 'Roswell'.
SUMMARY
No
amount of printed words here can come
remotely close to
matching the powerful impression left on
those who have seen our
video tape recording of the interview with
John Vasquez, from
which these quotes were derived. It is,
without question, an
extraordinary tale, but unlike so many
ex-military personnel who
have come forward down the years with
equally bizarre
stories. John Vasquez's credentials are
different, and in so many
positive ways:
• He
has hitherto not been 'contaminated' by
the UFO
community - mainstream or otherwise.
• He is not out to make fame or fortune.
• He
is not a senior military or intelligence
figure, just a
humble combat infantryman who seeks the
truth.
• He
has substantial documentation,
correspondence and
newsclippings which corroborates his
background, the JAWS
test and phoney 'measles' outbreak.
• He
is not leaning on the side of those who
might suggest this was
an 'ET or UFO-related'
experience/incident, albeit that if it
were, it would be instantly labelled one
of the most sensational in
the annals of the subject.
No,
Vasquez is equally intrigued by the
possibility that a
secret JAWS test was deliberately
conducted against an
unwitting battalion of seasoned troops to
gauge
their reaction.
Of
course, it wouldn't be the first time that
US military
personnel have been used as guinea pigs to
test covert
experimental 'hard-ware', but might it be
a 'first' for helping to
provide factual evidence that 'UFOs' have
been deployed in
some form of mass psychological weapons
test.
Certainly, JAWS could not be construed as
a defensive
mechanism; the very meaning of the term
'Attack' suggests that
it has potent offensive capabilities.
If
this was used on the unsuspecting 1,300
officers and men
of 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry, the
ramifications could be
profound, not least for those soldiers who
possibly
suffered long-term effects.
GWB |
