Case · UFO Afrinews No 20, July 1999
Maury Island incident (book review retelling)
1947 ยท Maury Island, Puget Sound, Washington, Tacoma, United States
Outside the region. Hind reprinted this case from elsewhere; it has a file here but no place on the map.
What was reported
Reviewing Jim Keith's Casebook of the Men in Black, Prier Wintle recounts the Maury Island affair. On 21 June 1947 Harold Dahl saw and photographed six objects 2000 ft above Puget Sound, five circling a sixth in apparent trouble, which dumped white metal sheets and dark slag onto the beach. His superior Fred Crisman confirmed the debris and saw one object himself. Next day a man in a black suit recited to Dahl exactly what he had seen and threatened his family. Ray Palmer sent Kenneth Arnold to investigate; a hotel room was already booked in Arnold's name and his interview leaked to a Tacoma paper. Intelligence officers Brown and Davidson called it a hoax and died when their aircraft crashed carrying the debris; an attempt was made to sabotage Arnold's plane, two journalists died, Palmer was fired and Crisman was posted to Korea. Crisman was later subpoenaed in the Kennedy case as an alleged CIA agent.
What Hind made of it
Reviewer Wintle finds the whole combination thoroughly suspicious, right up a conspiracy researcher's alley; Keith treats such MIB cases as government interventions or hoaxes.
Explanation offered
Hoax pronounced by military intelligence; government intervention
In their words
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Five were circling round a sixth, which seemed to be in trouble
Cross references
- Casebook of the Men in Black, Jim Keith, 1997
- The Truth Behind the Men in Black, Jenny Randles, 1997
- Operation Trojan Horse, John Keel, 1970
- Kenneth Arnold sighting, June 1947