The Brazilian Marine sergeant's Kalahari crash site, December 1988

What was reported

Irene Granchi, head of CISNE in Brazil, sent Hind an interview conducted by one of her most reliable investigators, a doctor, with a retired Marine sergeant. He claims the Brazilian Navy flew him to South Africa in December 1988 for four days to photograph a crash in the Kalahari (which he misspelt 'Kalawari'); the film went to his superiors and he saw no prints. Near a hamlet of nomadic cattle herders, in well-treed country, many trees had been torn from the ground as if something had fallen on them, blackened metal lay beside them, and the crater was deep but only about 15 m across. He says a French agent caught surveying the site was shot by the CIA, and that American Marines with machinery and cranes cleared the area, leaving a heap of bent metal. The Brazilian investigator believes he has no axe to grind.

What Hind made of it

Hind finds the story interesting but riddled with problems: a December 1988 visit cannot report a May 1989 event; why would anyone fly a Brazilian naval photographer 8,000 km unless no South African photographers existed or Botswana barred South Africans; Kalahari nomads do not drive cattle; and the CIA would not shoot a French agent before witnesses. If he is truthful, an All-Nations Committee rather than MJ-12 is implied and van Greunen may have built his saga on a real fall, more likely space debris or a secret weapon than a UAP.

Explanation offered
Space debris from a foreign satellite, or the remains of a secret weapon South Africa wanted to retrieve; possibly the real event behind van Greunen's hoax

In their words

• what was left over looked like a heap of bent metal.

• If he was flown to South Africa in December '88, he could not be reporting on an event which happened in May '89!

Cross references

• Case No 21 (04-13-1)
• UFO Afrinews No 3
• CISNE, Brazil

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 4 (March 1991), spread 13-14