Distinctly Montana Magazine

27 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m * * * * From the beginning of UFOlogy proper, the field has been plagued by those twin specters, official obfuscation and show- boating crankery, opposite sides of the same vexatious coin. In the case of the so-called Mariana video, while it is difficult to quantify their influence, these elements were almost certainly both at play. The first supposedly reared its head after the video was sent to, or rather demanded by, the Air Force. According to Mariana, he was contacted by a local representative of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He agreed, more or less, to let the Air Force look at the video. It was sent to Wright-Patterson AFB, fa- miliar to UFO wonks everywhere as second only to Groom Lake when it comes to being officially mysterious. A few days later, the Air Force issued a press release saying the video was "too dark to distinguish any recognizable objects." This was patently false, as you can judge for yourself by watch- ing the footage. Then the Air Force sent the footage back (a little surprising, frankly). After reviewing the film, Mariana claimed that some 35 frames, or about a second and a half, had been cut from the footage. That particular moment, he claimed, had mostly clearly shown the objects' shape and spin, and an evident notch that ran around their perimeter. The Air Force, unsurpris- ingly, denied making the alteration. Two years later, Project Blue Book, the official Air Force inves- tigatory body tasked with studying UFOs, requested to look at the footage again, and once again Mariana sent the footage. This time, he stipulated, they could only review the footage if they didn't make any cuts. After reviewing the footage (and noting that it appeared to have been torn and repaired with cellulose tape), Project Blue Book concluded that the objects were the re- flections of the two passing jets, which satisfied no one. In between the development of the footage and its being handed off to the Air Force, Mariana had screened it a number of times to friends and interested folks in Great Falls. Later, many of them would recall having seen the earlier, unaltered film. Tony Dalich was the owner of Allsports Supply Co., a sporting goods store at which Mariana had screened the film. He saw it before and after the alleged Air Force intervention, and he es- timated that "two or three feet of film" were missing from the version he later saw on television. E.P. Furlong of the Great Falls Tribune also remembered a longer version after seeing the film when it appeared on the 1956 documentary special. Perhaps the most damning evidence for Air Force tampering is a simple matter of arithmetic. Captain John Brynildsen, the special investigator from Great Falls who forwarded the film to Wright-Patterson, wrote a letter saying that he had some fifteen feet of film to submit. But Brynildsen had told a Great Falls Tri- bune reporter two days before that he had picked up eight feet of film. Today the footage, held in the National Archives, is a little over six feet of celluloid. Again, somebody was lying. Either the Air Force lied about the length of the footage and whether they had altered it, or Mari- ana lied about the original length of his film. Which one seems likelier? The subsequent 70 years of UFOlogy would suggest the former, as neither the intelligence agencies nor the armed forces have been forthcoming on the subject. As recently as late July, a whistleblower told Congress that witnesses had even, in some cases, been hurt or killed to keep "flying saucer" secrets quiet.

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