Date:
May 6, 1978
Location: El Taire Mountain, Bolivia
On
May 6, 1978, at about 4:15 p.m., something crashed into
a mountain near El Taire on the Bermejo River, the border
between the Bolivian province of Tarija and Argentina.
Thousands of people saw this happening, and later described
the object as being cylindrical in shape with a flaming
tail. It had caused a supersonic bang that was heard up
to 150 miles away.
Photograph of El Taire mountain.The crash site is marked
with an arrow. (credit: Hesemann)
The UFO crash in Bolivia. Sketch according to eyewitness
reports. (credit: Hesemann)
Source:
Michael Hesemann, 1998
On
May 6, 1978, at about 4:15 p.m., something crashed into
a mountain near El Taire on the Bermejo River, the border
between the Bolivian province of Tarija and Argentina.
Thousands of people saw this happening, and later described
the object as being cylindrical in shape with a flaming
tail. It had caused a supersonic bang that was heard up
to 150 miles away and that cracked window panes as far
away as 30 miles in every direction. The next day, the
papers were speculating on what had come down in that
godforsaken place. The explanations ranged from meteorites
to UFOs and belated re-entry of some Apollo capsule. All
of them referred to statements of eyewitnesses.
Then
it was announced that the Argentinian authorities had
sent the 20th unit of the border police to the area in
question to look for wreckage on their side of the border.
The search in that mountainous country could last for
weeks, so swarms of reporters went to the nearest big
town, Aguas Blancas, to take up quarters there and await
further developments, as well as to interview eyewitnesses
in the town. And in fact, there were a number of witnesses
who claimed to have seen the object. Most of them described
it as oval or cylindrical and metallic. The army, too,
seemed to be convinced that it was a UFO. Corporal Natalio
Farfan Ruiz, the commandant of a small border police unit
at the little village of La Marmora (800 inhabitants),
confirmed the crash to Argentinian reporters saying: "It
was about 4:30 p.m. when a cylindrical object made the
earth tremble. Just imagine what would have happened if
the UFO had fallen on the houses!" Policeman
Juan Hurtado had also seen what had happened: "It
looked like a gigantic wine container emitting a trace
of white smoke. I saw it clearly. It flew directly above
my head. I was on duty and at that moment was talking
with three engineers from the mine in La Paz, when we
saw the object crashing into the El Taire mountain. The
impact was so strong that it threw me to the ground. The
earth trembled at that moment."
Finally,
the Bolivian Air Force sent three single-motored AT6 airplanes
a model from World War II to the area and
discovered the crash site on the southern slope of the
El Taire mountain. Whereas the pilots found it impossible
to land anywhere near it, the newspaper Clarin of Buenos
Aires announced on May 14, that the object had been found.
As proof, they quoted the police chief of Tarija: "Our
men have discovered the object and inspected it, but have
received no instructions for further action. It is a dull
metallic cylinder twelve feet long with a few dents. No
one knows what is inside it, and we are awaiting the arrival
of various technical commissions. A NASA expert is also
expected to arrive tomorrow morning."
As
a matter of fact, no NASA expert came at Tarija. Instead,
two U.S. Air Force officers, Col. Robert Simmons and Maj.
John Heise arrived. According to a newspaper, although
these officers were officially on leave, they had been
instructed to take the object to the United States in
a Hercules C-130 transport machine, which was waiting
for them at La Paz. When other newspapers made inquiries
at the American Embassy regarding this secret mission
of Simmons and Heise, they were met with a denial. Only
two years later, 5 relevant documents were released by
the U.S. State Department: they revealed that Simmons
and Heise had been assigned to the military attache of
the U.S. Embassy in La Paz and did, in fact, fly to Tarija,
accompanied by an officer of the Bolivian Air Force, in
connection with Project Moon Dust.
The
first of these documents was a telex sent by the U.S.
Ambassador in Bolivia, Paul H. Boeker, to the State Department.
In that, he quoted newspaper reports and requested the
department "to ask the relevant agencies whether
they could explain what this object could be,"
adding "during the last week, more and more UFO
reports are coming from this region." The answer
was a telex classified "secret" dated
May 18, in which the U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance
personally declared: "Preliminary information
has been checked with appropriate government agencies.
No direct correlation with known space objects that may
have reentered the earth's atmosphere near May 6 can be
made. However we are continuing to examine any possibilities."
He
then referred the embassy to "State aerogram A-6343"
of July 26, 1973, classified 'Secret,' "which
provides background information and guidance for dealing
with space objects. In particular any information pertaining
to the pre-impact observations, direction of trajectory,
number of objects observed, time of impact and detailed
description, including any markings would be helpful."
The next document was a "Moon Dust Message"
of the office of the U.S. military attache, dated May
24, addressed to the Division for Foreign Technologies
at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the headquarters
of the U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon, classified as "confidential
NOFORN (No Forwarding To Foreign Nationals)."
Under reference Moon Dust, the military attache at La
Paz reported that "they had taken pains to verify
the press reports." In addition to that, they
had asked the general staff of the Bolivian Air Force
and the chiefs of the Bolivian Army who had declared
apparently after a first unsuccessful attempt "we
have sent search troops to the area in question but have
found nothing." The army came to the conclusion
that there could have been an object there, or maybe not,
but to date they had found nothing. The attache added
that he would send two officials to Tarija and promised,
"We will keep you informed if anything turns up."
These "two officials," we can assume,
were Simmons and Heise.
Regrettably,
no further reports concerning the Simmons-Heise expedition
were released and, to get a picture of what happened,
we are forced to rely on reports in the Argentinian press.
Apparently, however, nobody came to the conclusion that
a meteorite had hit the earth. At the world-famous Smithsonian
Institution, there is a data bank of scientific occurrences,
or an "alarm network," that keeps track
of every volcanic eruption, every earthquake and every
meteorite collision since 1973 with painstaking accuracy.
The data bank reveals no mention of a meteorite falling
during May 1978 at the Bolivian-Argentinian border. The
Air Force documents reveal that the 1127th field activities
group, which coordinated Project Moon Dust, was interested
in another task besides the recovery of UFO wrecks and
other space objects, represented by the code name HUMINT.
This code name, short for Human Intelligence, means the
collection of information from human sources through clandestine
undercover methods in contrast to interrogations,
reading through files and correspondence, etc. In other
words, it meant the collection of information about UFOs
from reliable sources through a game of deceit. The method
which was chosen to achieve HUMINTs goals was so bizarre
that nobody outside the UFO community would believe it.
It was the birth of the "Men In Black,"
subject of a Hollywood blockbuster movie in 1997.
Source:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case635.htm