Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret

«Evidence of official lying about UFOs is not evidence of the reality of UFOs.» — la frase de principio del libro.

«Science has little to do with politics, advertising or religion.» — su regla de deslinde disciplinar.

«It doesn't start from belief and it isn't done by lobbying Congress or by gathering and amplifying rumors from other people: it begins with individual research on hard data and reproducible experiments.» — Cómo dice que empieza.

«Either witnesses were missing, testimony was dubious or second hand, or vital evidence simply could not be found» — el veto de Hynek sobre los casos de accidente, consignado en primera persona.

«there was nothing for a scientist to take to the lab, and secrecy wasn't the only reason, or even the main one.» — La razón que da Hynek para ese veto.

«that long-tortured, misused, misplaced word again: Evidence!» — la palabra que persigue todo el libro, en ironía tipográfica del propio autor.

«Evidence of what? What a funny word, “evidence,” I suddenly realized.» — La vuelve a interrogar cerca del final.

«I began a collection of artifacts that has expanded to some twenty-five items, mostly (but not always) of metallic composition, from four continents.» — declara su propia colección.

«But such a collection, like the one at “Wright-Pat”, doesn't prove anything by itself.» — Le quita valor probatorio en la misma frase.

«Paola, who sought to reconstruct the chain of custody over this gap of many years» — la cadena de custodia como problema declarado, adjudicado a la coautora.

«history of the object and the chain of custody, to get the story straight» — el mismo criterio, otra vez, ante la transcripción de las entrevistas.

«Chemical analysis has now confirmed that the bracket was not a high-technology item but was consistent with contemporary knowledge of metallic alloys.» — el resultado del análisis, consignado en contra de la expectativa del propio investigador.

«The only material evidence we did have in our custody was the bracket itself: neither the fibers nor the foil or the pyramid were forthcoming» — Qué NO se recuperó.

«What we simply fail to understand is the actual propulsion of the craft, for which we have no clear data.» — reconoce el hueco explicativo.

«We don't even understand what caused the collision with the tower that led to the actual crash.» — Lo extiende a la causa misma del choque.

«do reinforce the extraterrestrial hypothesis. But what does “extraterrestrial” mean, in our current, limited understanding of the structure of our cosmic environment?» — mantiene la hipótesis extraterrestre e inmediatamente interroga el término. No cierra.

«It should be strongly emphasized that proving that something is extraterrestrial is extremely difficult, even if one had a craft in hand» — el límite epistémico que asume, citando a Knuth, Reali y Powell (*Entropy*, 2019) y firmando el énfasis como «JV».

«Some of the statements by Reme Baca, for instance, were not clear to a scientist.» — consigna las contradicciones de sus propios testigos en vez de suavizarlas.

«There were contradictions in the testimonies, yet to be clarified.» — dicho sin atenuante.

«There is even an interesting dissonance between Reme and Jose on this point.» — nombra la disonancia entre los dos testigos sobre la naturaleza de las criaturas.

«Jose, however, insists on calling the creatures “men,”» — Consigna el lado de Jose de esa disonancia.

«it became obvious to us that everybody might be using obsolete hypotheses» — su crítica a las hipótesis exóticas por defecto.

«the naked truth is that very advanced technology is not necessarily esoteric» — el argumento con que la sostiene.

«So why are we posing as a principle that Alien vehicles must use horribly complex materials?» — La pregunta con que la cierra.

«continue our research, with no preconceived assumptions about extraterrestrials or contemporary theories of physics.» — su regla de avance declarada.

«we expect to publish those results in the scientific press, after proper peer review, in an effort to place the subject within the “official” scientific literature, where it has never been admitted.» — el destino que se propone para los análisis.

«The most obvious negative effect of the circus atmosphere created by clamoring voices on cable TV and web podcasts» — diagnostica el circuito mediático como causa de la retirada de testigos.

«Understandably, the academic community has seen through the charade and generally declined to get involved.» — su explicación de por qué la academia no entra.

«But without the depth of knowledge and the open debate tradition of the modern academic world, very little real progress will be accomplished in this field.» — Por qué eso le parece un problema.

«At Stanford University, Professor Sturrock has conducted and published analyses of the famous Ubatuba explosion of an unknown device in Brazil» — el precedente serio que invoca.

«If there was a genuine UFO crash in 1945, two years before Roswell, but only four weeks after the first atomic explosion, that was an extraordinary fact.» — el hecho del que parte todo el libro.

«Arnold's sighting is reliable and it triggered the media's fascination with the problem, but the 1945 case was more important.» — la consecuencia bibliográfica: las historias del fenómeno que arrancan en junio de 1947 quedan mal datadas.

«It represented a source of key questions one could no longer avoid.» — Las cuatro preguntas que ordenan el libro, la última de ellas «Where's the damn Evidence?».

«Those are questions that knowledgeable Italian journalist Paola Leopizzi Harris had started to ask before me, and even before Ron.» — adjudica la prioridad de la investigación a su coautora, sin ambigüedad.

«Formally trained in Italy as an educator, and a long-time, trusted research associate and translator for Dr. Hynek, she had been at the site before any other investigator.» — Consigna su afiliación.

«She is the only researcher who met both witnesses, and recorded their testimony.» — el dato que la hace insustituible en la cadena.

«As a researcher of ufology, I have been criticized for not taking an active enough interest in contact and “crashed saucer” cases, like Roswell.» — autocrítica declarada sobre su propio historial.

«The accusation is a valid one.» — La concede.

«with amused interest, relieved by occasional giggles when he spoke of his scientific prowess» — sobre cómo leyó a George Adamski, en verbo de decir y con distancia.

«All of us, as it turns out, were wrong about Scully, but that's another story.» — se corrige a sí mismo sobre Frank Scully.

«My colleagues assure me it was a hoax. I am not so sure. I regret not following up on that one.» — sobre Maury Island, 21 de junio de 1947.

«he admitted to me he'd not actually seen an Alien, or even a saucer» — sobre George Hunt Williamson, firmante del affidávit de Adamski; cierra el episodio con «I came back empty-handed».

«field research yielded nothing more than proof of blatant, continued, boring official lies.» — su balance sobre el trabajo de campo en Roswell.

«Dangling the promise of “UFO Disclosure” is as good a marketing strategy as any, since progress cannot be measured by any realistic standards, and there is no defined end point to the research.» — objeta la promesa de «Disclosure» como estrategia de mercado.

«every segment, group and cult among the colorful crowds at UFO conventions defines “Disclosure” differently.» — Señala que el término mismo es inestable.

«Disclosure could only come from the same organizations that are in charge of the security brief itself.» — el argumento estructural contra su viabilidad.

«And those organizations have their own agenda and constraints, which may be regrettable but possibly legitimate.» — se abstiene de juzgar la legitimidad del secreto.

«Any Disclosure will be managed by the same groups that have safely managed the dossier for the last 75 years, and they can spin it to their liking» — el corolario.

«There may not be anything to contradict or to affirm, in the sense of the way good people have been asking the question.» — sugiere que puede no haber documento que revelar.

«What secrecy? Is anything written down somewhere?» — la pregunta con que lo formula.

«We shouldn't even fantasize about a cabal, or a secret government, or a Vatican plot, or a grotto of Bavarian Illuminati dressed in funny robes.» — desactiva por su nombre la lectura conspirativa esotérica.

«the Keepers of the Secret (I prefer to just call them “the Custodians,” because they may not have gained any real understanding of what they are supposedly guarding) may be a specialized team that cuts across the stovepipes of classified technology development» — Propone en su lugar una custodia técnica compartimentada.

«Dr. Jeff Kripal of Rice University has pointed out that the Alien in modern abductee accounts is often described as insectoid» — la única cita de estudios de la religión del libro; el bloque que sigue es voz de Kripal.

«Professor Kripal's observation is very apt in this case.» — el apoyo, que dura exactamente una frase.

«they were fully conscious at the time, had never been subjected to hypnosis, were not victims of an abduction real or imagined, and cannot be suspected of being influenced by medieval notions about Magonia or by esoteric Victorian literature.» — La exclusión: el marco comparativo se aparta para que el caso valga como control. Única mención de *Magonia* en el cuerpo del libro.

«And they experienced their ordeal many years before the topic of abductions, or the very expression "flying saucer,” was ever taken into account by researchers.» — el argumento cronológico con que sostiene la exclusión.

«angle, in their (misplaced) efforts to be taken seriously by the public, by Government and by incredulous physical scientists.» — su reproche a los ufólogos que descartan el ángulo psíquico; la frase arranca al pie de la p. 168.

«Everything, in this story, appears to be going in threes.» — el juego de tríos que da título al capítulo doce: tres bombas, tres criaturas, tres «short ugly guys», tres artefactos.

«The only one for which unusual properties were described was the foil, because it was supposed to regain its original shape when folded» — de los tres artefactos, solo uno tenía propiedades declaradas.

«in hot weather, the metal would not get hotter but would remain cool on the skin, which the child actually enjoyed as she innocently played with it» — la propiedad térmica, consignada como testimonio de Sabrina Padilla y no como resultado de laboratorio.

«If my friend Ron Brinkley hadn’t insisted on buying me a drink at the legendary Owl Bar & Café in San Antonio, New Mexico, I would never have become absorbed in the complex drama of Trinity, and in the forgotten records about the first UFO crash in modern history.» — así fechan los autores el arranque de todo el libro, en una parada casual camino al aeropuerto en octubre de 2017; el yo del prólogo es el de Vallée.

«There were many rumors, dating back to the 1940s, when farmers and ranchers claimed to have picked up strange pieces of metal on their land after seeing a weird object in the sky, often right under the noses of Army grunts who boasted of deep secrets and threatened the locals with jail, or worse, if they ever talked about what they’d found.» — el trasfondo que dicen haber salido a verificar en las Plains of San Augustin: rancheros que desde los años cuarenta decían recoger metal extraño, y militares que los amenazaban con la cárcel.

«Secrecy or not, seventy years had passed, and we had in fact picked up a number of interesting pieces of shredded material, undoubtedly from the crash of something» — lo que dicen haber recogido ese día, en una fórmula que no nombra de qué fue el choque.

«I knew the old stories, some of which I had verified, about such items getting lost or stolen, so I felt I was on a mission to secure our data once and for all» — el motivo declarado de la prisa por llevar las muestras al laboratorio: en este campo los objetos se pierden o se roban.

«Yet I had known Ron long enough to trust his instinct» — el criterio con que aceptó el desvío, dicho como confianza en una persona y no como indicio.

«I had traveled there with Dr. Hynek, back in the 1970s, to work at Corralitos Observatory» — consigna su antecedente propio en Nuevo México, de la mano de Hynek.

«But this latest trip had been the most beautiful, an exciting survey of the High Desert, culminating in the recovery of long-buried material samples at a place local researchers had suspected from their own observations, contacts and confidences from trusted neighbors, to be the actual site of a very weird crash.» — de dónde salió el sitio, según ellos: de la sospecha de investigadores locales apoyada en observaciones y confidencias de vecinos, no de un archivo.

«But neither I nor my parents had any concept of a nuclear war. Even today, there’s never been a nuclear explosion in Western Europe.» — el contraste con que el prólogo entra a la era atómica, desde el recuerdo de guerra del propio Vallée en Pontoise.

«Crashed saucers were not on the agenda, but Allen had read all those reports.» — sitúa el asunto de los choques fuera del programa de trabajo con Hynek en Northwestern, y a la vez dentro de sus lecturas.

«Deceptive official posturing at the service of bureaucratic tranquility is nothing new, even in the form of lies to Congress, under oath, in uniform, your right hand on the Holy Bible.» — la mentira oficial se consigna como rutina burocrática y no como prueba de nada, que es el reverso de la frase de principio del libro.

«But what if you didn’t come from Alpha Centauri at all? What if your spacecraft was designed to crash? What if it was a gift? Or a signal? Or a warning? The hopeful inception of a strategic conversation? What if it wasn’t a “spacecraft” in our current, primitive sense of the word? What if you didn’t care if the occupants died? Nobody had seriously considered those alternatives.» — la serie de preguntas con que abre las alternativas al choque accidental —regalo, señal, advertencia— y las deja abiertas, sin adoptar ninguna.

«I still don’t have a good answer to that one.» — la abstención ante la objeción clásica de por qué una nave interestelar se estrellaría en un rancho.

«He could only repeat stories I’d read a dozen times. They all began in the summer of 1947.» — su balance de la entrevista con Ray Palmer, editor de Amazing Stories: el relato del campo siempre arrancaba en 1947.

«Our findings are the subject of this book. They challenge the very nature of this field of research and yes, of science.» — lo que los autores dicen que está en juego con lo que traen, dicho sin adelantar el resultado.

«They pose fundamental interrogations not just for a few scientists, but for Humanity itself: its past history; its present and its future.» — la escala que le atribuyen a las preguntas del caso.

«The picture that emerged was of a dangerous time, a period of seemingly super-human creativity, of science at the extreme edge of secrecy and danger, of crazy experimentation with elements unheard of in all of history, without any sure guidelines for controlling their release, and indeed, no moral precedent to assess the scale of the destruction that would follow, or the waste in thousands of human lives.» — cómo describen el marco de 1945 en el que insertan el caso: creatividad extrema, secreto y ningún precedente moral para medir la destrucción.

«I dearly wish I could share the thrill of the resulting quest and our early conclusions with Ron, but we lost him in August 2018.» — el prólogo se cierra con la muerte de Ron Brinkley, que por eso no leyó ninguna de las conclusiones que el libro le atribuye haber provocado.

«The first controlled nuclear chain reaction in history had taken place there, on December 2, 1942 under his direction.» — el antecedente de Chicago con que abren el capítulo uno, bajo la dirección de Enrico Fermi.

«Two years later, the science work had moved to New Mexico, and the Fermi family lived in Los Alamos, where Laura worked as a medical assistant to Dr. Louis Hempelmann, of the Los Alamos Health Group.» — sitúan a Laura Fermi como asistente médica de Louis Hempelmann, el mismo médico cuya declaración sobre la sobreexposición citan al final del libro.

«Trinity also marked the end of innocence, if there ever was such a thing, for America--and the rest of Humanity.» — la lectura moral que los autores le dan a la prueba, con su propia reserva metida en el inciso.

«History rolled on from there, implacable and deadly. Following that successful “test” of a bomb simply called “The Gadget,” containing six kilograms of plutonium, things happened very fast.» — el ritmo con que encadenan la prueba y los bombardeos, y el nombre y la carga del artefacto de julio.

«President Truman lost no time in revealing its nature to the world. And three days later, on August 9, 1945, as Ron had reminded me, the 10,800 pound plutonium-based “Fat Man," based on the design of “the Gadget” tested at the Trinity site pulverized the sophisticated military complex at Nagasaki harbor, the pride of Nippon heavy industry, the heart of its invincible Navy.» — aquí los autores fechan Nagasaki el 9 de agosto, un día después de la fecha que el prólogo pone en boca de Brinkley.

«In the process, it wiped out the munitions plant that had manufactured the torpedoes used to sink the American ships at Pearl Harbor. On August 15, 1945, the Emperor of Japan, broken, humiliated and confused, issued an Imperial Rescript of Surrender accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, 1945, his envoys signed the Instrument of Surrender on the flight deck of the USS Missouri.» — cierran la cronología bélica con la rendición, que es el suceso contra el que fechan el choque de San Antonio.

«The Pentagon was tired of fighting a horrible war of attrition against what was left of the great Japanese military might, in desperate battles with high losses on both sides, on every single God-forsaken little island across the Pacific.» — el motivo que le atribuyen al uso de la bomba, en clave de desgaste militar.

«It was already clear, from Intelligence information and from confidential reports from networks of European scientists gathering information on German projects (such as the group created by my late publisher and friend Jacques Bergier, one of the earliest French atomic spies, who was involved in the tracking of “Heavy Water” in Norway and in the discovery of the Peenemunde rocket base) that the Nazis were seriously working towards a nuclear breakthrough.» — la fuente que invocan para el temor alemán es una red de espionaje científico que dirigía Jacques Bergier, a quien Vallée presenta aquí como su editor y amigo.

«The Manhattan Project implemented three enormous secret facilities for specific science goals: Gas diffusion and electromagnetic processes at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; nuclear reactors capable of producing the necessary plutonium at Hanford, Washington; and the design and actual construction of the bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico, under Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.» — el reparto de tareas del proyecto, en tres sedes.

«In order to calibrate the radioactivity measuring instruments, a preliminary test was done on May 7, 1945 at the Trinity site.» — consignan una prueba previa en el mismo sitio, dos meses antes de la nuclear.

«It was not a nuclear weapon, but rather a dirty bomb that used a conventional explosive with a 100-ton power that was mixed with materials obtained from Hanford, and dispersed the radiation over what the Army casually called “a fairly wide area.”» — y precisan qué era esa prueba: explosivo convencional con material de Hanford, con la fórmula del Ejército citada entre comillas suyas.

«There was one major risk: if the chain reaction failed to start, the TNT would shower the New Mexico landscape with highly radioactive plutonium dust.» — el riesgo que dicen que motivó el contenedor Jumbo.

«A modern Army brochure (9) mentions that in the end, Jumbo was never used in the test because the scientists gradually became confident that the plutonium bomb design would work: Why waste some precious material?» — por qué no se usó, según el folleto del Ejército que citan, con la pregunta retórica de ellos encima.

«Asked to sign a receipt for it, Brigadier General Tomas Farrell recalls demanding to hold and handle it:» — el marco con que introducen el testimonio de Farrell sobre haber sostenido la esfera de plutonio.

«Because the device was standing vertically, an official brochure states, the bombs were stacked at the bottom, resulting in both ends of the cylinder being blown off, as I could see during a site visit» — apoyan el dato del folleto en su propia visita al sitio, que es el modo de trabajo que el libro repite.

«Living so close to Ground Zero, the families of Jose and Reme would soon experience a sudden change in their world, and the two boys would be the first witnesses to the extraordinary event that marks the true beginning of the UFO era in the United States—still unexplained today in spite of its» — la tesis del capítulo dos: los dos niños como primeros testigos de lo que el libro llama el verdadero comienzo de la era del fenómeno en Estados Unidos; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«To the Army, the event would be just one more local mission to investigate the destruction of a radio tower and to recover a strange craft fallen from the sky during a thunderstorm.» — cómo describen la mirada del Ejército sobre el mismo suceso: una comisión de rutina, sin conciencia del lugar ni de su gente.

«To us, however, analyzing the events in the light of 75 years of accumulated data, what the two boys experienced at that special location needs to be brought to light and analyzed in the full context of American technology and culture at the critical time of the end of the Second World War.» — su regla de lectura declarada: el episodio se analiza dentro del contexto técnico y cultural estadounidense de 1945, no aparte de él.

«At the end of the Civil War, after 1865, violence became even worse. Many defeated Confederate soldiers came west to seek new fortunes. Some went on to California and Nevada where gold had been discovered in 1849, while others joined the US Army’s battles against the Indian population. It was a horrible time, since one of the Government’s favorite tactics was to kill all the buffaloes in an area to deprive the tribes of their traditional source of meat.» — el libro dedica varias planas a la historia de despojo de la región antes de llegar al caso, y la cuenta sin atenuantes.

«Evidence has been found of the burnt, hollowed-out logs they used as water pipes, and cultural archaeologist Kay Sutherland has theorized that the “painted images” of the Mogollon, preserved on stones surfaces, may have been used “as a mystical gateway to the spirit world.”» — la única lectura simbólica del sitio que el libro recoge se la atribuyen a la arqueóloga cultural Kay Sutherland, no a ellos.

«Mystical or not, the place was destined to serve as an interface with unknown realities.» — con esta frase despachan la lectura mística y se quedan con la suya: el sitio como interfaz, término que no desarrollan.

«In the following days and weeks people would realize that what they had seen and heard wasn’t simply the result of an explosive test, or an accident in a munitions storage area at the Alamogordo Bombing range, as the Army had initially announced.» — consignan que el primer comunicado del Ejército sobre la prueba de julio era falso, como antecedente local del secreto.

«Nobody saw the object arrive from the sky.» — la abstención con que cierran el capítulo: del suceso central del libro no hay ningún testigo de llegada.

«Although the case has largely been neglected, or cursorily noted and then forgotten in all the sensational television arguments about Roswell, a few investigators did take an interest in the story.» — el estado de la cuestión con que abren: el caso existía en la literatura y nadie lo siguió.

«He obviously did his homework, but he then went on with his other investigations.» — reconocen el trabajo de Timothy Good y a la vez marcan que lo dejó a medias.

«There was one notable exception to the benign neglect that surrounded the case: In long, detailed interviews that Italian investigative journalist Paola Harris did on July 5, 2010 after she’d tracked down Reme Baca to his home in Gig Harbor, Washington State, she understood why the case filled important gaps in the story of recovered unidentified craft. (14) She completed that interview with a detailed phone conference with Jose Padilla, then a State Trooper in Rowland Heights, California.» — fechan y sitúan el trabajo de Paola Harris con los dos testigos, que es la base documental del libro.

«It wasn’t well-known, simply because the initial story hadn’t been followed up by publicity-seekers; and perhaps because other, more obscure reasons made it particularly challenging.» — su explicación del olvido, con la reserva de que las otras razones quedan sin nombrar.

«Investigators from UFO groups and a few individual researchers came and went, but the case didn’t seem to have the mystery and stimulating aura, or the political theatrics and public appeal of the nearby Roswell crash, so eventually they ignored it again, while Paola continued her investigations.» — lo que le faltaba al caso para interesar al campo, según ellos: teatro político y atractivo público, no evidencia.

«The transcripts she shared with me (lightly edited here for clarity) leave little doubt about what had happened in the days following the incident.» — declaran la edición de las transcripciones y el alcance que les dan; el libro reproduce después esos turnos con sus rótulos.

«This is a contradiction with the date given reported by Jose Padilla, who has a record of August 16th, a Thursday. We’ve verified that later date» — acotación de los autores dentro del propio turno de Reme: dos testigos dan fechas distintas y ellos se quedan con la de Jose.

«For the object to dig such a wide gouge, one foot deep, all the way across the side of the hill, represents a very large amount of energy. In a couple of minutes, the craft carved a wide scar in the landscape that might have taken a couple of hours for a bulldozer. Furthermore, the device must have hit the ground with high velocity and tremendous horizontal momentum.» — el primer alto analítico del libro, que convierte el relato del testigo en parámetros físicos.

«This surely wasn’t a weather balloon, but it wasn’t just a clever model either, based on somebody’s idea of a deception, as part of some counter-intelligence operation. The gouge in the earth, the increase in ground temperature, the burning plants, the rising smoke and the fact that the object kept its integrity through the catastrophic event, all point to the fact that what the two boys witnessed was the real thing: a solid vehicle of an unknown type and function.» — la conclusión que sacan del surco, el calor y el humo: descartan el globo y el señuelo de contrainteligencia, y se detienen en vehículo sólido de tipo y función desconocidos.

«Further evidence that the crash did happen as the kids describe it comes from the crew of a B-29 on a training mission flying over Walnut Creek, who reported seeing the smoke: They thought a plane might have hit the Marconi tower and crashed.» — el único apoyo externo al relato de los niños que ofrecen aquí: una tripulación de B-29 que reportó el humo.

«It has just been raining hard, the air is very humid, yet the creosote is burning, not the wreckage itself, although it was a natural assumption for Timothy Good to make in his book.» — corrigen a Timothy Good sobre qué era lo que ardía, y lo hacen sin quitarle crédito.

«That statement is important, because it marks the first instance of a kind of interaction between the phenomenon and its witnesses that may be fundamental to our eventual understanding of the UFO problem in general: Witnesses are an integral part of the event.» — la tesis más general que los autores derivan del caso: la interacción entre el fenómeno y quien lo mira sería parte del suceso, no un ruido a descontar.

«The reality of home and family reasserts itself and becomes the rationale for leaving the scene, a critical decision to which we will return later, when Paola speaks to Jose himself and gets his side of the story. But the kids’ duty to their parents wins in the end, and they go home.» — marcan como decisión crítica del caso la de no entrar a la nave el primer día, y anuncian que volverán a ella con la versión de Jose.

«At this point on the tape, there is a further exchange between Paola and Reme about the size of the object, which the two kids actually measured by “stepping” it when they came back to the site in the following days. Jose Padilla, who paced the ovoid craft as best he could without being detected, said it was about 25 to 30 feet long and 14 feet high, which he knew “because of the rafters of a house are 14 feet tall.”» — de dónde salen las medidas del objeto que el libro maneja: de los pasos de un niño de nueve años y de la altura de las vigas de una casa.

«It seems that the Army detail sent to recover the craft came from White Sands Proving Grounds to the East (see map on Figure 14).» — de dónde dicen que salió el destacamento, con la reserva del verbo en el arranque de la frase.

«We should note that Mr. Padilla, when he was interviewed by us, only recalled one Jeep at this point, not two.» — consignan la discrepancia entre los dos testigos sobre el número de vehículos en vez de elegir uno.

«From Jose’s testimony, then, construction of the new gate and the new road could have begun on Monday, August 20th, although it would have taken a couple of days to build a dirt road strong enough to safely hold an eighteen-wheeler hauling away an “experimental weather balloon” that weighs several tons...» — la reconstrucción de fechas que hacen del operativo, y la ironía con que devuelven la explicación oficial del globo meteorológico.

«For me, reading this in the twenty-first century, Reme’s transcript seems almost too simple, too matter-of-fact.» — cómo leen ellos mismos el testimonio, declarando la extrañeza en vez de resolverla.

«None of the precautions we will witness in later UFO recovery efforts or in Spielberg movies, with sanitized equipment and crews in special biohazard suits, are in evidence in San Antonio» — el contraste con la iconografía posterior del rescate de naves: en 1945, según ellos, no hay trajes ni protocolo.

«There is some bright spider web, or angel hair, which we glorify now by calling it fiber optics: It is saved as a curiosity.» — nombran el material con el término del folclore ufológico y con el término técnico moderno, y consignan que se guardó como curiosidad.

«Of course it would happen this way: nobody could have been prepared for such an event.» — la improvisación se les vuelve argumento a favor de la verosimilitud del relato.

«Reme and Jose act under the impulse of the moment, watching everything, waiting for an opportunity to grab some piece of evidence, some object that might be useful, or a toy, or a trinket.» — el motivo que le atribuyen a los niños para llevarse las piezas, dicho sin heroísmo.

«We don’t believe anyone was aware of how important this object might have been, certainly not us.» — la abstención sobre el conocimiento que tuvieron los actores de 1945, ellos incluidos.

«The term “flying saucer” hadn’t become part of the vocabulary and anyway, that craft wasn’t a disk.» — el argumento de vocabulario con que sostienen la anterioridad del caso: en 1945 no existía el término, y además la forma no correspondía.

«It was just a strange private adventure for Jose and Reme, caught in the middle of a very focused military operation that was complex, unique, secret, and evidently improvised.» — cómo describen el operativo militar del que los dos niños fueron testigos laterales.

«As we’ve seen, the object must have stayed at the site much longer, although indeed Brothy, Sr. may have been able to secure the site on August 17 if his commanding officer, General Maurice Arthur Preston, did leave him in charge there until the next day when Army Colonel Turner took over.» — contrastan el testimonio de un tercero con su propia cronología y dejan las dos versiones puestas.

«But the detachment seen by Reme and Jose doesn’t appear to be a team of aviators, and the object could not have been physically evacuated until a week later.» — la objeción con que acotan ese testimonio de segunda mano.

«All that is real: we’re not dealing with a simple observation of some damaged vehicle. Nor is this a case of reconstructing a scene days later, as in Roswell: We have two witnesses on site during the crash, and two adults visiting the craft and stepping inside it less than forty-eight hours later.» — su argumento de por qué este caso no es Roswell: hay testigos en el momento y adultos dentro de la nave a menos de dos días.

«In an extraordinary description of his own emotions, Reme recalls that the anguish of the little creatures seemed to get transmitted to him. When the craft had passed over the landscape and plowed into the hillside, triggering a rise in temperature, fog and smoke, time itself had seemed to change. Now the kids “feel pure sorrow,” as if that overwhelming emotion had been communicated to them by these creatures that are not human, creatures that can move from one place to another seemingly by instant gliding, yet “seem like us, children.”» — cómo resumen el núcleo del testimonio, con la emoción transmitida y el deslizamiento instantáneo puestos entre comillas del testigo y no como hecho propio.

«It is interesting that Paola, always the perfect, impartial interviewer, finds herself compelled here to advance her own, rational explanation for the kids’ paralyzing fascination at the scene: “You were trying to figure it out,” she suggests, offering a conventional, reassuring rationale for their confusion.» — el libro se audita a sí mismo: señalan que la coautora le ofreció al testigo una explicación racional, y que esa explicación es de ella.

«And we see Reme, who was clearly emotional a few minutes before, jumping at that chance to reconcile that long time he and Jose spent on the spot staring at the hurt, crying creatures with what a perfectly normal person would do if confronted with any strange scene: “Yes,” he says, “trying to figure it out.”» — y consignan que el testigo se acogió a esa explicación, lo que deja marcado el efecto de la entrevistadora sobre el testimonio.

«The Army’s attitude, rigid in extreme secrecy and in absurd “those were weather balloons” explanations, and the lack of interest from scientists, combined to create an atmosphere where any clever witness understood the wisdom of shutting up.» — su explicación del silencio: la combinación del secreto militar con el desinterés de los científicos, sin cargarle la culpa a una conspiración.

«That is still true today, in Europe and the Americas.» — extienden ese diagnóstico al presente y a los dos continentes.

«Scientists and the public in general may not be aware that many witnesses do the same today, even if they have in their possession what they think might be evidence of the reality of an unknown phenomenon;» — sostienen que el silencio de los testigos con material en la mano sigue siendo la norma, y no la excepción de 1945.

«Jose and Reme didn’t actually own what they called the “Treasure,” although it was found on family land, Indian land, but the Army didn’t have any clear right to it either (Note), and the original owners, whoever they were, Aliens or not, hadn’t made any renewed effort, physical or legal, to claim it back; so the best course was simply to shut up» — el razonamiento de propiedad que le atribuyen al silencio de los testigos, con la sorna del inciso sobre los dueños originales.

«English author and noted UFO analyst Timothy Good was given a piece from the object for testing when he met with Reme in Seattle.» — consignan que una pieza salió del caso hacia otro investigador antes de que ellos entraran.

«It appears decidedly terrestrial, a point conceded by the witnesses.» — el resultado de ese análisis va en contra de la expectativa del caso, y lo escriben sin rodeos.

«A section cutoff for analysis, as well as acid tests, reveal the metal to be 200-series aluminum, or similar.» — la composición que arrojó la pieza analizada por terceros: aluminio corriente.

«A cautious word about technical history is important here because, as in the case of the transistor, many UFO books have incorrectly described how certain inventions came to be.» — la cautela que se imponen antes de tocar el tema de la tecnología derivada, con el transistor como caso de atribución falsa.

«This shows that, while the physical concept had been known for years, no practical application of the type described by our witnesses would have been realistic in 1945, let alone in a craft with the structure and capabilities of the one that crashed on the Padilla land.» — su argumento contra la hipótesis del prototipo terrestre: el concepto existía pero la aplicación no era realista en 1945.

«Reme Baca, therefore, is justified in saying that “at the time, we didn’t know what it was,”» — con eso le dan la razón al testigo en su ignorancia declarada, que es lo contrario de pedirle una identificación.

«We could only laugh or cry at the wild rumors on every cable channel and late-night radio about supposed American bases on Mars and the oddly-designed “Serpo” hoax that drove naïve researchers into a maze of blind alleys from which they haven’t yet emerged.» — nombran por su nombre el engaño de Serpo y las bases en Marte, y le atribuyen al campo haberse metido en callejones sin salida.

«They still do, but things have moved on: Now we have real data, and the means and the tools to bring research to a much higher level.» — el optimismo con que cierran el reproche, apoyado en datos y herramientas y no en revelación.

«Because the old theories won’t work.» — la razón que dan para no quedarse en el marco recibido, sin decir cuál lo reemplaza.

«The fact that the two witnesses of the San Antonio crash remained silent during their whole active lives is a prime example of this, but I have others of equal relevance in my 500-odd files of over 50 years.» — apoyan la generalización sobre el silencio en su propio archivo, cuyo tamaño declaran.

«In the real research world, the serious study of unexplained materials from UFOs has a long, quiet and distinguished history.» — reclaman para el análisis de materiales una tradición discreta pero seria, contra la idea de que el asunto empieza con ellos.

«When I published the first peer-reviewed assessment of UFO cases with hard physical data in 1998 (19), it was done from the point of view of a global search for information patterns and energy parameters, rather than as a fresh investigation of the primary data in the field – much of which, frankly, left me skeptical at the time.» — fechan en 1998 su primera revisión con arbitraje y consignan que los datos primarios lo dejaban escéptico entonces.

«The story of the Padilla Ranch was NOT just one more ufological rumor, amplified through some cable series or reformulated in slick, trendy tones by the modern media.» — el deslinde con que separan su caso del circuito mediático, con la negación en versales del propio libro.

«It was the stuff TV channels didn’t dare to touch because it might antagonize some sponsors» — el motivo económico que le atribuyen a la ausencia del caso en televisión.

«Today we can marvel at the fact that the significance of the event was missed for so long, although it took place close to the first nuclear explosion, in time and geography.» — el asombro que se permiten sobre su propio campo, por haber dejado pasar el caso pese a la cercanía con la prueba nuclear.

«The strategic questions were obvious: This wasn’t just the ordinary UFO case, a stranded motorist or a passing tourist seeing a strange light.» — por qué le dan rango estratégico al caso y no de avistamiento suelto.

«Some of those official actions did not make much sense, either.» — consignan que la conducta oficial les resulta incoherente, sin proponer una intención detrás.

«There had been no publicity, no big story, no interest from TV reporters and only casual attention from a few ufologists.» — el vacío mediático que describen alrededor del caso antes de su propia intervención.

«Our initial idea of surveying the actual crash site, and digging there, was obviously unrealistic, given the presence of the dense, poisonous vegetation.» — el primer muro de campo que declaran: la vegetación venenosa sembrada encima del sitio.

«How nice of the Government, I thought, to mark the exact spot for visiting ufologists! But they could have marked the spot with more elegant flowers.» — la ironía con que registran esa siembra, sin llegar a afirmar que fuera deliberada en ese punto.

«The spot had remained rather bare, but in time one could see a wide circle of small flowers.» — lo que el testigo les dijo del terreno después del choque, consignado con su reserva temporal.

«Botanists who did the determination of the exact plant for us told us its rapid growth in the Delphos case could have been stimulated by electromagnetic radiation.» — traen el caso Delphos y la hipótesis de estimulación electromagnética en boca de los botánicos consultados, no propia.

«In medieval times, the phenomenon of these large radiating mushrooms gave rise to stories, legends and tales about “fairy rings.”» — la única mención de hadas en todo el libro es micológica: el autor de Passport to Magonia cita aquí los anillos de hadas como fenómeno de hongos y no como material comparativo.

«I could only concur with the observation that the selection was deliberate: If the Federal Bureau of Land Management had wanted to prevent erosion or mud slides, they could have used many other types of plants.» — aquí sí adoptan la conclusión de que la siembra fue deliberada, y la apoyan en que había alternativas para el mismo fin declarado.

«Jose and Reme quickly noted that the military didn’t always keep a secure watch around the object: the young soldiers» — cómo explican que dos niños pudieran acercarse al objeto custodiado; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«The kids kept their mouth shut, their father didn’t believe his employee’s story, and the metal bracket remained a secret.» — resumen así los setenta años del soporte metálico fuera de todo registro.

«It had already been tested in Mexico (on October 24, 2017) at the Centro Educacional Analitico where chemical engineer Bernabe Hernandez Santos found a preponderance of Aluminum (757 mg per gram) followed by an ‘unreadable’ element for 34.6 mg, then zinc (27.0), iron (6.5) and another unknown for 158.5 mg.» — el primer análisis del soporte, hecho en México antes de que ellos entraran, con dos elementos que el aparato no pudo leer.

«I don’t believe in unreadable elements,” I told Paola. “There must be better results somewhere and anyway, we’ll redo the measurements.» — su reacción ante ese resultado, que es negarse a leer un hueco de instrumento como un elemento desconocido.

«New Mexico is a tough place and it can get ugly, even under the bold display of its cosmic beauty.» — con esta frase cierran el hallazgo de la muerte de Brinkley durante el viaje.

«The landscape was irradiated, seventy-five years ago, by the deadly light from Trinity.» — cómo describen el sitio de la prueba al visitarlo en 2018.

«Here, in July 1945, humanity was thrust into a new, terrible world from which we never emerged.» — la lectura histórica que sostienen sobre la prueba, en presente y sin salida.

«In a report published in the Fall 2005 issue of the Nuclear Weapons Journal, scientists Robert Hermes and William Strickfaden finally explained what had happened: Instead of being baked under the blast, as one would have expected, much of the sand was first» — para la trinitita se remiten a una publicación técnica firmada; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«It had been just an unplanned side trip, taken on a whim, triggered by the random finding of a newspaper someone had left behind at the motel coffee shop, but our visit to Ground Zero isn’t an experience I will forget as long as I live.» — declaran que la visita a Ground Zero fue improvisada, disparada por un periódico olvidado en una cafetería.

«Perhaps the flood would have brought more pieces of foil to the surface, we said hopefully; but it might have buried them even deeper; or carried them downstream for miles, never to be found.» — las tres posibilidades que dejan abiertas sobre lo que la inundación hizo con el material, sin elegir ninguna.

«The reality of field investigation, even when you’re guided by people who were there at the time and know the territory, doesn’t conform to any neat pattern.» — su descripción del trabajo de campo, dicha contra la expectativa de un procedimiento limpio.

«You have to follow your intuition and invent new procedures; then you have to check everything and do it again.» — la regla de método que sacan de ahí, con la verificación repetida como parte de ella.

«The Park Rangers have identified these plants as Night Shade and Xanthium strumarium (Cocklebur), just from the photos we took.» — la identificación de las plantas la firman los guardabosques y no ellos; antes habían apostado por otra especie y lo consignan.

«To me, the idea of digging was unrealistic for several reasons, including the plain requirement to maintain slope stability in the area, and also because that would take a Federal permit, and formal clearance from BLM.» — los motivos por los que no excavaron son de estabilidad del talud y de permiso federal, no de secreto.

«The result of the levelling, however, was that any remaining pieces of material from the time of the crash would have been buried even deeper, making any attempts to detect them magnetically a futile exercise, although we did try bravely, working» — reconocen que la detección magnética estaba condenada de antemano y que la intentaron igual; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Most scientists interested in the UFO phenomenon focus on the physics and the primary data about the aerodynamics, like good students at the time of an exam. If they could make sense of those parameters, they might be able to build similar flying devices; they could patent them» — el motivo que le atribuyen al foco en la física del fenómeno: construir aparatos parecidos y patentarlos.

«Yet any good scientist will tell you that, in order to be useful, such data needs to be correlated or calibrated against something more specific: a known effect, a reference signal.» — el requisito de calibración que le exigen a cualquier dato del campo.

«This is where the UFO Phenomenon proves to be most intractable, unfortunately, rendering most typical databases of limited utility, no matter how massive.» — su veredicto sobre las bases de datos del campo, incluidas las que él mismo ayudó a construir.

«The wise old recommendation to “shut up and calculate” doesn’t quite apply any more.» — con la consigna de la física cuántica dan por insuficiente el tratamiento puramente numérico del caso.

«Yet we couldn’t quite make enough sense of it all to begin proposing reasonable scenarios about the craft: where it came from, how and why it crashed, and what its sudden intrusion at that historic moment actually meant.» — la abstención que abre el capítulo: con todo calculado, siguen sin poder proponer un escenario del artefacto.

«What was still missing in our analyses had to do with the human dimension, the social background, the cultures at the site, the languages spoken, even the variable meaning of words.» — aquí nombran lo que falta, y es materia de antropología: fondo social, culturas del sitio, lenguas habladas y el significado variable de las palabras.

«And such variables have rarely been taken into account in the analyses of UFO observations or in the compilation of sighting catalogs.» — el reproche que le hacen al campo entero, catálogos incluidos.

«When the witnesses are members of the military, there is an existing, fixed process for interrogation and processing, and it doesn’t start with anthropology.» — por qué el procedimiento institucional no recoge esa dimensión, dicho con el nombre de la disciplina que echan de menos.

«Even when the case happens among civilians and is reported to the police, the procedure begins and ends with “Just the facts, Ma’am”.Some subtle questions never come up.» — el equivalente civil del mismo cierre, con la fórmula policial citada.

«Investigators are human and they behave according to patterns they’ve long practiced —patterns that work well in conventional events like car accidents, or a case of stolen goods.» — a qué le atribuyen ese cierre: los investigadores repiten rutinas que sirven para accidentes de coche y robos.

«They were not physically paralyzed, yet some force glued them to the spot in fascination for a long time.» — cómo describen la hora y media que los niños pasaron quietos, distinguiendo la fascinación de la parálisis física.

«There was also the sense that the sounds of nature had stopped: no singing birds, no rustling of leaves: a characteristic feature of many accounts reported later, in so many cases of close encounters across the US and other countries.» — aquí sí comparan el caso con el corpus moderno de encuentros cercanos: el silencio de la naturaleza como rasgo característico.

«And for several years after that, the nightmares, the realization that another level of existence impinged on their ordinary American lives; until the true dimensions of the events at Trinity became obvious.» — el efecto que le atribuyen al episodio en la vida posterior de los dos testigos, con la fórmula de otro nivel de existencia que no desarrollan.

«Knowledge of the San Antonio crash should have died without notice, except for a chance occurrence, an unrelated Internet search in genealogy archives that reconnected the two prime witnesses after their many years of silence.» — a qué le atribuyen la reaparición del caso: una búsqueda genealógica en internet que volvió a juntar a los dos testigos.

«In 1947 the Army Air Force itself vanished into the limbo of military bureaucracy and whoever got the brief at the top security office of the newly-created Energy Department and at the Atomic Energy Commission clearly understood that her job was to bury the folder.» — su explicación institucional del expediente perdido, con la reorganización burocrática de 1947 como causa.

«As Reme Baca had vividly recalled, if you talked too much about the affairs of Ground Zero, or if you happened to remember too many details, the government might send you on a long restful cure in “Las Vegas,” the local nickname for the nearby insane asylum.» — recogen del testigo la amenaza local del manicomio como sanción por hablar, y lo dicen con su apodo.

«treatment might not be as harsh as it was for people who talked too much in communist Russia, but there were notable parallels.» — el paralelo que se permiten con la represión soviética, acotado en la misma frase.

«The fact is that nothing more would have happened, even after the newspaper story, and after Reme Baca and Jose Padilla were in communication again, if Paola hadn’t decided to pursue» — vuelven a adjudicarle a la coautora la continuidad de la investigación; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«The atomic bombs had put an end to the shooting war, but the Cold War was just beginning.» — el marco político con que explican el endurecimiento del secreto justo después del caso.

«Secrecy and paranoia, if anything, were becoming even more imperative and intense.» — cómo describen el clima de los años que siguieron, del que hacen depender el silencio de los testigos.

«Scientists working in government were on notice that dissent was no longer tolerated.» — la lección que le atribuyen al caso Oppenheimer para el resto de los científicos.

«The loss of his security clearance ended Oppenheimer’s role in government and policy.» — el desenlace de la audiencia de 1954, que el libro usa como medida del costo de hablar.

«The general outline of the story has been presented in earlier chapters, but it cannot be fully grasped without the smaller details,» — su justificación para repetir el relato del caso con más detalle en esta parte.

«There is no room for ambiguity or “guessing” in such research: You just get the story, and then you come back and you do it again, from another angle.» — la regla de entrevista que enuncian: volver sobre el mismo relato desde otro ángulo, en vez de completarlo por inferencia.

«We should pause again here, to note a discrepancy between Reme Baca’s recollection of that evening’s events and the later testimony of Jose Padilla, who told Paola that the sun was still above the horizon when he climbed into the craft.» — otra discrepancia entre los dos testigos consignada como tal, esta vez sobre la hora del día.

«With Jose’s basic information in hand, the conversation returned to Reme’s experiences as a sequel to the sighting itself. We have to keep in mind that Reme, two years younger than Jose, was crying at» — cómo introducen la parte de sueños y secuelas, recordando el estado del testigo más chico; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«I suggested to her we needed to take the opportunity of the sequestration to re-examine everything we knew, and “take it from the top” again.» — cómo describen el reinicio de la investigación durante el confinamiento de 2020, con las entrevistas a distancia.

«We had enough of all the esoteric speculation: we needed to know actual dimensions, weight, materials, and a general model of the outside and the inside.» — aquí despachan lo esotérico por especulación y ponen en su lugar dimensiones, peso y materiales; es una de las cuatro apariciones del término en todo el libro y es peyorativa.

«From experience with the field I knew the story we were piecing together from the sometimes divergent accounts of the two main witnesses, would be challenged, distorted in a dozen podcasts» — anticipan la distorsión de su propio material en el circuito de pódcast, y admiten que los relatos de los dos testigos divergen; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Any analysts following us or reviewing our work would want to know dimensions and materials – two areas that Mr. Padilla had very competently covered in our interviews – but also weight, density and other features.» — para qué buscan las medidas: para que otro pueda revisar el trabajo, que es el criterio que declaran.

«The object was long gone, so the best we could do was an estimate.» — el límite de todo el ejercicio, dicho sin adorno: el objeto no está y lo demás son estimaciones.

«Trinity meant nothing less than the first, full-scale detonation of an atomic bomb over American soil,» — precisan que la prueba de julio no fue un ensayo parcial sino una detonación plena en suelo propio.

«They also point out that “the villain in this story is, and always has been, secrecy.”» — hacen suya, citándola, la fórmula de que el villano del asunto nuclear es el secreto.

«An official 1978 study concluded that the area was “one of the significant plutonium contaminated areas in the United States, both in terms of the quantity of plutonium deposited and area extended.”» — el dato oficial de contaminación con que sostienen el daño a la población local.

«Advocates of the nuclear option point out that Oppenheimer and his team could not have anticipated the extent of the damage to the population.» — consignan el argumento contrario antes de responderlo, y le conceden parte de razón.

«It was only in 2008 (!) that a review by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confessed that internal doses received by Trinity victims were never part of a scientific and medical evaluation, even though Manhattan Project biological staff were on hand and must have been well aware of the dangers.» — la omisión médica que denuncian, con el signo de admiración del propio libro sobre la fecha.

«But no long-term epidemiological or genetic damage assessment study was ever initiated for the “downwinders” of Trinity.» — lo que nunca se hizo con la población expuesta, dicho como ausencia y no como encubrimiento.

«The catalogue of unclassified physical cases where recovery of a material specimen was done under reliable conditions is small, yet it provides a basis for some simple comparisons.» — el alcance que le dan a su propio catálogo comparativo de materiales recuperados: pequeño, pero suficiente para comparar.

«Our article reawakened interest in the incident: it was investigated again in 1973 by William Case, a journalist with the Dallas Time-Herald, and by personnel from the McDonnell Douglas aircraft company.» — el caso de Aurora de 1897 entra al catálogo por un artículo propio anterior, y con investigadores de la industria aeronáutica detrás.

«The fragment retrieved by Mr. Case and his team was determined to consist of aluminum (83%) and zinc (about 16%) with possible traces of manganese and copper (sorry, no “silver”).» — el resultado del fragmento de Aurora contradice la leyenda del metal precioso, y lo dicen con sorna.

«It hasn’t escaped our notice that the Aurora object, like the oval craft seen by Padilla and Baca, hit a tower before it went crashing to the ground: two similar accidents, half a century apart...» — el paralelo que sí trazan: dos objetos que chocan contra una torre con medio siglo de diferencia.

«If those are piloted by sophisticated Aliens, what does that tell us about their navigation skills?» — la pregunta con que dejan en aprieto a la hipótesis de pilotos avanzados, sin responderla.

«Military authorities and the FBI, in a confused series of investigations, attributed the case to a hoax, a conclusion that has been embraced by many ufologists, but I don’t think any such statement can be drawn from the reported facts.» — se apartan a la vez de la conclusión oficial de engaño y de los ufólogos que la aceptaron, sin afirmar lo contrario.

«Although the material appears to be common tungsten-carbide, laboratory study by Mr. Sven Schalin at an SAAB aircraft laboratory, and also at unnamed laboratories in Sweden and Denmark, disclosed it also contained cobalt and was consistent with manufactured products.» — otro caso del catálogo cuyo material resulta compatible con la industria terrestre, consignado igual.

«Of course we don’t know what role the “impurities”» — la abstención con que cierran ese análisis; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«In particular, some authors have suggested that the Ubatuba magnesium had been artificially altered.» — consignan la objeción de otros investigadores contra el caso más citado del catálogo.

«The recovered sample was analyzed at Iowa State University and at the Griffin Pipe Products company, leading to the determination that the metal was chiefly iron with small amounts of alloying elements such as nickel and chromium, excluding a meteoritic origin or indeed any other natural occurrence.» — el caso de Council Bluffs, con exclusión declarada de origen meteorítico o natural y sin afirmar el origen contrario.

«The incident is of particular interest because police and firefighters reached the scene within minutes and were able to identify and interrogate eleven witnesses in all.» — por qué ese caso les importa: por la calidad del registro y el número de testigos, no por el material.

«No other witnesses, in recorded history, have actually done that before them, or since.» — la singularidad que le adjudican a los dos testigos, que es haberse llevado material del sitio.

«Any significant material associated with these objects is in the hands of governments, and off-limits to researchers without a specific clearance, and related need-to-know.» — por qué dicen que nadie más pudo hacer lo mismo: el material queda del lado de los gobiernos y de las habilitaciones.

«As far as Mr. Padilla’s comment that he was “never scared,” that statement may strike some readers as boasting» — anticipan la objeción del lector contra su propio testigo antes de responderla; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Over multiple meetings with him, I have built up a different opinion: His calm and patient attitude with us was deceptive, because there was so much underneath that was built on unusual strength, courage and a knowledge of people good and bad that only an experienced police officer can acquire.» — cómo justifican la credibilidad del testigo: por el trato repetido y por su oficio, no por el contenido de lo que cuenta.

«It is important to keep in mind that the San Antonio area essentially bears the wounds of a war zone, devastated by a full-scale nuclear» — cómo caracterizan la zona: no como campo de pruebas sino como zona de guerra; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«This change in the landscape, which we also noted on our way to Ground Zero, is a lasting effect of radiation, not of the UFO crash.» — deslindan expresamente el efecto de la radiación del efecto del choque, en contra de la lectura fácil.

«Something was wrong with the well-behaved way Academia had been teaching us about the world, and looking at the things that didn’t fit accepted models.» — el reproche a la academia se formula como falta de atención a lo que no encaja, no como conspiración.

«You are supposed to put down your drink, wipe any lingering smile from your face, and seriously recite from the accepted textbook:» — describen como recitado social la respuesta obligatoria sobre el asunto en medios cultos.

«Yes there are sightings, and those cops and pilots are truly good people, but they can be fooled, you know, like all of us, by all those optical phenomena in the sky, not to mention fancy secret prototypes from the Pentagon.» — reproducen ese recitado entero para desarmarlo, con los prototipos secretos incluidos.

«And none of that makes any sense, when you look at the real data.» — su respuesta, que apela a los datos y no a una autoridad.

«In reality, witnesses of early cases like Mr. Padilla are still alive and can testify about the physical objects they observed and the material recovered in 1945 and even before.» — el argumento con que sostienen la anterioridad del fenómeno a 1947, con testigos vivos.

«To cite just one example, a paper presented at an AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) conference held in 1975 found 52 witnesses of close encounter cases before 1947.» — la cifra con que apoyan la existencia de encuentros cercanos anteriores a la era del platillo, tomada de una ponencia de 1975.

«The number of known “early” witnesses has grown considerably since that survey was published, proving that we are not dealing with a spurious sociological effect» — de ahí concluyen que el fenómeno no es un artefacto sociológico moderno; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«For those who take the trouble to look at the real reports, vetted by serious field investigation and brought inside the lab, the phenomenon reveals itself to be infinitely more complex--and more interesting.» — lo que dicen que aparece al mirar los reportes verificados: complejidad, y no una respuesta.

«This gives the case heightened scientific interest, even compared to Roswell or other crash cases in the literature.» — por qué le dan rango científico a este caso por encima de los otros de la literatura.

«It was reasonable for Ryan Wood to make this assumption at the time, but from our own records, none of that was the case.» — corrigen a otro investigador del caso desde sus propios registros, sin descalificarlo.

«Above all, the kids made outstanding observers, even at that early age.» — la evaluación que hacen de sus testigos como observadores, apoyada en el uso diario de binoculares en el rancho.

«Reme Baca wasn’t telling Ryan Wood the whole story: Jose Padilla is the one who bravely climbed on the trailer where the craft was waiting for shipment.» — consignan que uno de sus propios testigos ocultó datos a un investigador anterior.

«The first thing we found is that the metal appears to be essentially an aluminum silicate.» — el primer resultado de la serie de análisis del soporte, en la versión que el testigo les transmitió.

«Since we can’t be certain who did the tests or where, and none of the “great pictures” have been published,» — y aquí retiran el crédito a esos mismos análisis por falta de trazabilidad; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«A third study, an extensive Australian investigation done in 2016, (27) also found that the metal sample was not radioactive and that it had two main components, confirming Reme’s statements.» — un tercer análisis independiente descarta radiactividad y confirma la descripción del testigo.

«They concluded: “The analysis shows the sample to be terrestrial.”» — la conclusión de ese estudio se consigna en su literalidad, aunque va contra la expectativa del caso.

«The sample is observed to be standard and unremarkable,” concludes the Australian study with no ambiguity, putting an end to the tales of extra-terrestrial high-tech, yet leaving us with lots of subsidiary questions.» — aceptan el veredicto del laboratorio y en la misma frase se niegan a que cierre el caso.

«Saying that the “souvenir” is an ordinary human object does not answer our basic questions.» — la forma corta del mismo argumento: la identificación del material no explica cómo llegó ahí.

«Recall that the bracket, which is shown “as is” on figure 20, was not connected to any rods, hooks or pullies, as its prominent features and holes would seem to indicate for its primary function.» — la anomalía que sí retienen del objeto: la pieza no estaba conectada a nada de lo que su forma sugiere.

«Could it be that the device discovered by Jose Padilla was not part of the vehicle’s original equipment, but more prosaically an improvised spool» — la hipótesis prosaica que se permiten sobre la pieza, formulada como pregunta; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Some researchers would later speculate about optical fibers, but the description reminds us more simply» — desactivan la lectura de fibra óptica que otros hicieron de las fibras; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«This is only one of several hypotheses we entertain, but it would also account for the fact that the military desperately wanted to get it back, pointedly returning to question Faustino about the whereabouts of their equipment, later sending a team to look under the floorboards of a house and even coming back with vehicles a few weeks later to search for…something the Army had misplaced.» — declaran que manejan varias hipótesis a la vez y explican con esta el empeño militar en recuperar la pieza.

«The bracket may have been uninteresting from a scientific point of view, but it could have exposed the true scope of the recovery work if too many people talked about it and exhibited it.» — separan el valor científico del objeto de su valor comprometedor, que es lo que sostienen aquí.

«It might be evidence of military involvement in an operation the Army wanted to close once and for all, as the uneventful collecting of an ordinary weather balloon: they would successfully use that same explanation two years later at Roswell.» — conectan la coartada del globo con la de Roswell dos años después, en modo condicional.

«But you can’t nail an aluminum bracket to the interior wall of a weather balloon, no matter how sophisticated.» — el argumento material contra la explicación oficial, dicho en una línea.

«Let us make a note here: We already know, at this point, that the object was not a craft from the United States Inventory, having encountered an accident during a storm and crashed on somebody’s land.» — la primera exclusión de su reconstrucción: el objeto no era del inventario estadounidense.

«Nor was it a German or Japanese device with the kind of equipment that would have instantly escalated the discovery to an altogether different level.» — la segunda exclusión, con su razón: un aparato del Eje habría escalado el caso de inmediato.

«Nobody knew what it was, or cared, initially at least.» — lo que queda después de las dos exclusiones, con su propia acotación temporal.

«The Army hadn’t lost anything, they didn’t miss any experimental device and weren’t looking for it.» — el dato con que descartan que se tratara de un aparato propio extraviado.

«It seems to imply either electromagnetic stealth (a concept that was still far in the future) or a very short flight: Where did it come from?» — la alternativa que dejan abierta ante la falta de detección previa: sigilo electromagnético o vuelo muy corto.

«But here again, there was no immediate intervention with a pre-cleared protocol, no arrival at the crash site of specialists in white hazmat equipment, none of the scientific reconnaissance with precise measurements, photographic documentation and environmental precautions we would see today, with Intelligence personnel recording every detail and doing rumor control.» — insisten en la ausencia de todo protocolo, que es su argumento recurrente contra la lectura de operación encubierta preparada.

«The Army scouts aboard the Jeep(s) would have made a report at that point, escalating the urgency of the case, but they would have gotten there too late to see any sign of the hombrecitos.» — el libro usa aquí la palabra en español de los testigos para nombrar a las criaturas, y se consigna tal cual.

«I must say I find this “explanation” amusing; which makes it even more unlikely that they would be as easily fooled by the “weather balloon” reference as the professional skeptics who still regularly invent such preposterous explanations to dismiss UFO reports for the benefit and peace of mind of academic scientists, professionally addicted to elegant short-cuts.» — su reproche más duro al escepticismo profesional, que acusa de fabricar explicaciones para tranquilidad de los académicos.

«Both military records and technical reports have long avoided the subject of the strange entities described by witnesses in connection with UFO encounters.» — consignan que el archivo institucional evitó el asunto de las entidades, que es el que aquí les toca.

«When they mentioned them at all, it was in the context of unspecified “psychological effects,” witness drunkenness or misidentifications.» — las tres etiquetas con que dicen que se despachaba el asunto en esos registros.

«It wouldn’t be until the early 1960s that write-ups of witness testimony would seriously address the paranormal issue, but then we always found them listed in connection with a psychiatric examination, or the suspicion of drug use.» — fechan en los años sesenta la entrada del asunto paranormal a los informes, y anotan que llegó pegado al examen psiquiátrico.

«Thus, to find these connections in the 1945 crash near Trinity is remarkable: Of course, there had been stories of Men from Mars and flying Aliens in comic books, in the “pulp” stories and in the early science-fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but there was no mainstream» — su argumento de contaminación cultural: en 1945 la imaginería existía en los cómics y en la ciencia ficción, pero no en la corriente principal; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Let’s also keep in mind that in that 1945 San Antonio case, none of the people involved (the witnesses, their family or the military) used any of the terms or memes we commonly associate with the phenomenon today.» — el argumento de vocabulario en su forma más amplia: ni los testigos ni sus familias ni los militares usaron los términos ni los memes del campo actual.

«It would be another two years before Kenneth Arnold would launch the “flying saucer” literature, almost ten years before the Air force invented the term of “UFOs” and almost twenty years (1964) before Dr. J. Allen Hynek agreed to consider “occupant” cases within his casebook, at my insistent urging based on the French data and his direct experience with the Socorro landing.» — la cronología del vocabulario del campo, con la fecha en que dicen que Hynek aceptó los casos de ocupantes; Vallée se atribuye ahí la insistencia.

«In their effort to make the whole phenomenon seem rational, or simply comprehensible to their audience, many authors have glossed over the peculiarities, the contradictions in the testimony of witnesses who were simply trying to express their puzzlement or their terror when faced with entities that seemed able to place images in their minds or communicate transcendent concepts.» — acusan a la literatura del campo de alisar las contradicciones de los testigos, y de paso nombran lo que se aliza: entidades que ponen imágenes en la mente y comunican conceptos trascendentes.

«Most of the civilian researchers actively involved in this research today still refuse to» — el reproche a los investigadores civiles por descartar el ángulo psíquico; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Reme couldn’t push away the experience, and he too had some visions he recalled 65 years later:» — consignan las visiones posteriores del testigo como parte del caso y no como ruido.

«In fact, the only strange thing about the bracket is why so many human and non-human creatures seem to be eager to recover it – and hide it!» — lo único que dicen retener como anómalo del soporte no es el metal sino el empeño de recuperarlo, y en la enumeración meten a criaturas no humanas.

«When you look at the case in that light, as the result of serious, converging investigation by multiple teams, a lot of facile, convenient hypotheses or explanations evaporate.» — el criterio de convergencia de equipos con que sostienen su descarte de las explicaciones fáciles.

«First, we have to ask a question that seems preposterous, or at least bizarre: What if the object was designed to crash?» — la hipótesis que retoman del prólogo y que aquí sí formulan como pregunta de trabajo, con su propia calificación de disparatada.

«Calling what happened at Ground Zero a “test” constitutes a nice scientific euphemism, because the power of the bomb was reliably estimated at 19 kilotons, which places it between Hiroshima (12 to 18 kilotons) and Nagasaki (21 kilotons).» — desmontan la palabra ensayo con la comparación de potencias entre las tres detonaciones.

«To be fair, soon after the review of the fallout, Army documents recommended that future tests be held at least 150 miles from populated areas, which led to the permanent relocation of the test site to Nevada.» — le conceden al Ejército la corrección posterior, con el traslado del campo de pruebas a Nevada.

«If visitors from elsewhere had wanted to sample the effects of the first atomic explosion one month after the Trinity event, they certainly could not have found a more appropriate location» — la hipótesis del muestreo deliberado se enuncia en condicional y a partir de la geografía, no de una intención atribuida; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Studying the documents from the time, I learned a stunning “detail” that had completely escaped me: the purpose of the bomb was never to spread radioactivity or its fallout.» — corrigen una creencia propia con documentos de época: el objetivo de la bomba no era la radiación.

«Instead, it was massive, instantaneous destruction by enormous air displacement and extreme temperature: essentially, a giant, deadly firestorm.» — y ponen en su lugar el efecto que sí se buscaba.

«His rough guess at the weight of the object itself was less than 10,000 pounds, the low end of the range for such a truck.» — de dónde sale la estimación de peso del objeto: de lo que el testigo recuerda del camión que lo cargó.

«Note that “Little Boy” weighed 9,600 pounds and Fat Man 10,300 pounds, in the same range.» — la comparación de pesos con las dos bombas, que es otro de los tríos que el capítulo persigue.

«Let’s note in passing that any aircraft of the time would have broken up into many pieces if subjected to the same catastrophic crash at that location.» — el argumento estructural con que descartan un avión de época.

«In 1945, the only way to assemble large metal plates involved visible rivets.» — el detalle de manufactura en que apoyan la rareza del casco descrito por los testigos.

«One major difference is the weight: Jumbo weighs 214 tons, versus our rough estimate of about five to ten tons for the Padilla object.» — comparan el objeto con el contenedor Jumbo del propio sitio Trinity y marcan dónde falla la comparación.

«Much of skepticism is short-sighted, born of prejudices and hasty judgment, antagonistic to the point of dishonesty and generally useless, but there is also a positive meaning to the word, directly derived from its Greek roots in philosophy.» — distinguen dos escepticismos y se quedan con el segundo, apelando a la raíz griega del término.

«Setting aside the fact that it would be foolish to expose an experimental prototype and give it away to the US if you were an outright enemy or a competing nation, we will see in the following chapters that the technology involved was even more extraordinary than the kids could imagine.» — la objeción de sentido común contra la hipótesis del prototipo enemigo, y el anuncio de lo que viene.

«In fact, we have nothing of the kind even today.» — su comparación con el estado actual de la técnica, dicha en cinco palabras.

«In a very comprehensive book entitled Man-made UFOs, 1944-1994, Renato Vesco and David Hatcher Childress also review the full range of secret vehicles conceived, built and tested by Nazi Germany towards the end of World War Two.» — la fuente que revisan para la hipótesis de la tecnología secreta alemana, con sus dos autores nombrados.

«Some of them were remarkable in the way they anticipated modern weapon platforms, but here again, one should not confuse an interesting experiment with a fully-developed flying craft.» — la distinción que le oponen a esa hipótesis: un experimento no es una nave terminada.

«While that reference is intriguing at the dawn of the modern flying saucer saga, let’s remember that all these devices had conventional propulsion by modern standards and did not resemble what Reme Baca and Jose Padilla observed.» — conceden el interés del Feuerball para la historia del platillo y lo excluyen igual de su caso.

«No matter how far I tried to follow the authors’ complex research, I have not found anything resembling the craft that crashed in San Antonito, which certainly didn’t have conventional engines and was neither a disk nor a rocket.» — el resultado negativo de esa búsqueda, declarado como resultado y no como descarte de la hipótesis.

«Furthermore, the kids had seen creatures that were alive and could not be confused with the humanoid dummies.» — la razón por la que descartan la explicación de los maniquíes de prueba.

«From a practical point of view, let’s also remember that those projects were not begun until Project Paperclip had resettled German engineers and their rockets to bases in the Southwest: Wernher von Braun launched the first V-2 from White Sands» — el argumento de fechas contra la hipótesis del cohete alemán: los ingenieros llegaron después; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Recall also that space research was long a topic of ridicule in the United States.» — el dato de clima cultural con que refuerzan lo anterior.

«The map is not the territory,” as Alfred Korzybski famously said,» — la única cita de teoría del lenguaje del libro, y la usan para hablar de mapas de terreno reales.

«Something as simple as reconstructing the position of the northern radio tower for the White Sands range had become an interesting puzzle, but of course it was critical to the trajectory of our “avocado.”» — el trabajo cartográfico del que hacen depender la trayectoria del objeto, con el apodo que le dan.

«Little by little, the drifting pieces of history were floating back in the current of time, through that remarkable memory of Mr. Padilla, and the collective memory of that little isolated part of New Mexico.» — cómo describen su propia fuente en esta parte: la memoria de un testigo y la memoria colectiva de la comunidad.

«The best hypothesis, as we saw before, was that a small Army team, alerted by the pilot’s observations of the smoke and the crash, came in on the second day (when the kids couldn’t come to watch) and took away some of the material.» — la hipótesis con que explican la desaparición del panel entre una visita y otra de los niños, marcada como hipótesis.

«It may seem that we were drilling endlessly with such questions, but it’s not every day that you have an actual witness of a UFO crash, who is so skilled at recalling the details of the disaster.» — justifican la insistencia de la entrevista por la rareza de tener un testigo directo con memoria fina.

«In the course of the inquiry it had become clear to us, not only that “the map is not the territory,” but that some of the things marked on the map were only the vague souvenir or departed spirit of structures that had existed once, but were no longer in existence on the land itself» — lo que aprendieron del trabajo cartográfico: el mapa conserva estructuras que el terreno ya no tiene.

«which meant reconstructing how it collided with the Marconi tower, but we didn’t know where the tower was, and the maps were of no help.» — el muro concreto de esa parte: reconstruir el choque sin saber dónde estaba la torre.

«It wouldn’t even be accessible to scientists with clearances above Top Secret from most Intelligence agencies, or the rest of the Executive Branch, all the way to the President, except by special requirement.» — cómo describen el compartimiento del archivo atómico, que es el modelo de secreto que manejan en todo el libro.

«That wasn’t the end of the conversation, because there was a military presence in that area for many years, and Paola was intrigued by some of the incidents that suggested ongoing search for traces of the incident.» — consignan que la presencia militar en la zona siguió durante años, y lo dejan en lo que le sugirió a la coautora.

«There is much mythology about those files, where they were, what they contained, who had access, and how they were processed.» — declaran mitología el relato corriente sobre los archivos de Blue Book, que es donde el propio autor estuvo.

«Most Americans and many ufology buffs have been misled by serious-looking television personalities stating that the records, of course, were SECRET.» — el desmentido central del capítulo: los archivos no estaban clasificados, y las versales son del propio libro.

«Of course, if they had been secret, there would have been no way for me, a French citizen with no particular official credentials, to get anywhere close to that Air force Base, and especially to that building, since I didn’t even have a US passport.» — la prueba que ofrece de eso es su propia entrada al edificio siendo extranjero sin credenciales.

«If you don’t understand the military, you may be excused for missing the fact that an unclassified, completely public archive may be housed inside one of the most highly secretive, most heavily defended buildings in the country.» — la distinción que le falta al relato corriente: la seguridad del edificio no clasifica lo que contiene.

«Many scientists in the US had qualifications equal to or higher than mine, and they could have requested access to the same files, but they were too busy pontificating on television, like Dr. Carl Sagan or Aviation Week journalist Philip Klass, explaining why there couldn’t be any real UFOs in the files they did not (and would not) look at.» — nombra a Carl Sagan y a Philip Klass y les imputa haber opinado sobre archivos que no abrieron.

«But Allen and I had copies of the files at the observatory at Northwestern University, and with official permission we could have shared them with any bona fides request for access from an academic researcher» — consignan que el material estaba disponible para cualquier académico que lo pidiera; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«The answer is mostly one of convenience: UFO reports were gathered by local Air force bases and they were disseminated through a military communications network under precise military procedures and codes, so it was natural for the office (three officers and two secretaries, at the time) to be housed inside that building.» — la explicación burocrática de por qué el archivo estaba ahí, con el tamaño real de la oficina entre paréntesis.

«Many of the sightings they contained could be identified and answered fairly rapidly by reference to star charts, weather data or NASA schedules.» — reconocen que el grueso de los reportes se resolvía con datos ordinarios.

«The implication was that, if a little more money was allocated, Blue Book would probably explain the remaining 5% by doing more detailed technical analysis, but the budget didn’t make that feasible at the time.» — cómo describen el argumento oficial del noventa y cinco por ciento explicado.

«If you can explain 95% of something, you should be able to extrapolate just a little bit and account for the whole thing, right?» — reproducen el razonamiento antes de rebatirlo, incluida su plausibilidad.

«Because the 95% were probably planted there by someone intent on fooling you or blinding you, and the 5% are designed to kill you.» — su objeción viene de la doctrina de inteligencia: el residuo no es ruido sino la parte que importa.

«The Romans had said it best, and most concisely: In cauda venenum.» — la única máxima latina del libro, y la usan para el mismo argumento del residuo.

«We discussed sharing the software I was developing in Chicago and backing up Blue Book statistics with something more defensible, even if that meant that the number of “unidentified” cases would go up once the procedures were properly cleaned up; because there was always that faint possibility that “the whole dang UFO thing” was real, armed and dangerous.» — lo que dice haber propuesto a Blue Book, con el efecto declarado de que subiría la cifra de casos no identificados.

«Scientists didn’t know what the pilots saw, and the public didn’t either because television always filtered out the real thing, but Blue Book knew, deep down inside, that there was a real thing, even if it was a career-killer to say so.» — su descripción del secreto no es de orden sino de costo profesional: la oficina lo sabía y decirlo arruinaba carreras.

«If the craft had landed around 6:45 pm that Friday, then the event coincided with the time when Allen Hynek and I had just left the Blue Book office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.» — la sincronía que da título al capítulo, formulada como coincidencia de reloj y no como significado.

«In retrospect, there was another very important thing we all missed–including Captain Quintanilla, Project Blue Book, me and my computer retrieval software, Dr. Hynek himself and all the ufologists in the world; namely the now-obvious connection to the San Antonio Jose Padilla case of 1945, because nobody in our group (or indeed, at Project Blue Book) would know about it for another sixty years.» — lo que dicen que nadie vio en 1964: que Socorro quedaba a unos kilómetros del caso de 1945, que nadie conocía.

«The object was gone, the traces were gone, and the files themselves were gone until 2010 or so, when Paola Harris, who’d heard about it in Rome as an Italian journalist, began reconstructing the missing data and tracking down the witnesses who were still living.» — la desaparición del expediente de Socorro y la reconstrucción posterior, que vuelven a adjudicar a la coautora.

«The catalogue of Blue Book cases for 1945 only contains four reports.» — el dato con que miden la ceguera del archivo oficial para el año del caso.

«It wasn’t able to make a connection between Socorro and the San Antonio case that had happened nineteen years before.» — y el corolario: la Fuerza Aérea no podía unir los dos casos porque uno de ellos no estaba en ninguna parte.

«Officer Zamora, thirty-one year old at the time, gave his testimony multiple times (33) and his statements were always consistent with what he told his colleagues and the FBI when he was debriefed immediately after the sighting, late into the first night, and again Hynek in the following days.» — el criterio con que avalan al testigo de Socorro es la consistencia entre declaraciones sucesivas, no el contenido.

«But when he got up on top of the hill, he found himself looking down at a big white oval craft on the ground, unlike anything he knew.» — así resumen lo que Zamora dijo haber visto, en el vocabulario de la extrañeza y no en el de la identificación.

«They didn’t wear any helmet, meaning that they could breathe our air.» — la inferencia que sacan de la ausencia de casco, dicha sin condicional.

«They were the first to pay attention to the indentations left by the object’s legs, and the small footprints left by the occupants.» — quién levantó las huellas de Socorro y qué huellas eran, según su reconstrucción.

«It must have been quite stressful, because in the absence of any logical explanation, some of the officers present went so far as to suggest that Zamora might have faked the whole thing in order to attract tourists to Socorro.» — consignan que la sospecha de montaje vino de los propios colegas del testigo.

«Since several days of confusion had already elapsed, however, it was very difficult to conduct a true physical examination there, because neither Moody nor the local law enforcement people had been careful about preserving the area that the FBI had properly roped off that first evening.» — a qué le atribuyen el fracaso del examen físico en Socorro: descuido de la escena, no ocultamiento.

«Those three reports had been made before the incident was publicized. They were never seriously taken into consideration.» — el dato que a su juicio invalida la versión de testigo único: había reportes previos a la publicidad del caso.

«The bottom line was that Quintanilla was placed in an impossible position as head of Blue Book, and Hynek was in a comparably impossible situation as his scientific advisor.» — reparten la responsabilidad como problema de estructura y no de personas.

«When Hynek proposed to extend the investigation to these other witnesses, a pretty obvious step for any scientist, the Air Force flatly denied the authorization, so their top scientific consultant had to rely on second-hand data, including the good independent research done by Ray Stanford, who had arrived in Socorro at about the same time.» — consignan la negativa de la Fuerza Aérea a que su propio consultor entrevistara a los demás testigos.

«The Air Force also forbade Dr. Hynek to look at comparable sightings, such as historical observations of oval objects with strange blue “flames” in our available databases.» — y la segunda prohibición, que es la que impedía cualquier tratamiento comparativo del caso.

«Here again, by presenting the case as a very brief, one-witness observation by an ordinary Latino cop, Project Blue Book could reassure Congress and the august, skeptical American academic community about the lack of any serious threat either to the Nation as a whole, or to cherished scientific theories.» — la función que le atribuyen a la versión oficial, y de paso señalan el uso del origen del testigo para restarle peso.

«It is interesting to note that the 1967-69 Colorado study under Professor Condon, which claimed to review the American data, and was applauded by the Academy of Sciences and the New York Times, never touched the massive records of the Socorro case and didn’t even include it in its index.» — su cargo contra el informe Condon no es de conclusión sino de omisión: el caso no está ni en el índice.

«An unintended outcome of that flawed strategy was my newfound ability to finally convince Dr. Hynek of the similarity of American landings and European cases—such as those recorded by the dozen in the French UFO wave of 1954 that I kept presenting to him.» — Vallée se atribuye aquí haber convencido a Hynek de la semejanza entre los aterrizajes americanos y la oleada francesa de 1954.

«It also led him to the realization that Project Blue Book, while it retained some value as a channel for the monitoring of reports across the country, had become scientifically irrelevant.» — el efecto que le atribuyen a esa misma situación sobre el juicio de Hynek acerca del proyecto.

«Their testimony was critical in convincing Hynek, who might not have taken a stand on Zamora’s report without it: He often retreated behind another Latin legal principle: Testis unus, testis nullus: A single witness is no witness... which was only true if you studiously avoided looking for the other people.» — la máxima jurídica con que Hynek se resguardaba, y la objeción que le hacen: solo vale si nadie busca a los demás testigos.

«In his excellent book, he quotes military specialists who examined the traces and computed that the weight would need to be in the range of 8 to 10 tons (16,000 to 20,000 pounds) in order to produce the four prints measured by the officers at the site.» — de dónde sale la estimación de peso del objeto de Socorro, que luego comparan con la del objeto de 1945.

«The final, official report entered into the Air Force files by the Blue Book staff contains gross inaccuracies, and it is hard to call them unintentional.» — la acusación con que abren el desmontaje del informe: los errores no parecen accidentales.

«The report states that Zamora was driving north in pursuit of a speeder. Actually, he was driving south, as one look at the map will confirm.» — primer error, verificable con un mapa.

«The report mentions that he saw “flames,” while he only spoke of “a blue flame.”» — segundo error, que es de número y de color y borra el rasgo más específico del relato.

«The report asserts that he parked his car 150 feet from the gully, which means he would have observed the craft from about 200 feet. In reality he parked on the very edge of the gulley, placing him only 50 feet away, an error by a factor of four!» — el error de distancia que más pesa, porque decide qué pudo ver el testigo.

«The fact that the occupants were dwarves is never mentioned anywhere.» — la omisión que señalan: el informe borra la estatura de los ocupantes, que es el dato incómodo.

«The official statement that “No other witnesses to the object reported by Mr. Zamora could be located” is a blatant lie.» — aquí abandonan el verbo prudente y lo llaman mentira, que es la única vez que lo hacen así en el libro.

«The inconsistencies in the edited or redacted statements point to a desire to minimize the strangeness and to impugn the reliability of the case; combined with the censoring of the observations by the other witnesses, this amounts to nothing less than blatant disinformation, directed at the US public and the scientific community.» — el nombre que le ponen al conjunto de esos errores, con su destinatario declarado.

«These accumulated errors would make it practically impossible for any independent scientist to review the facts of the case» — el efecto práctico que les importa: el caso queda fuera del alcance de cualquier revisión externa; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«I tried my best at the time to induce the Air Force to make an Intelligence problem of finding the missing witness, but they evinced no interest whatsoever.» — lo que dice haber intentado sobre el testigo que faltaba, y la respuesta que obtuvo.

«The idea that the craft seen by Zamora could be an Air Force Pogo was reviewed by our little group, but it didn’t survive Bill Powers’ engineering analysis:» — consignan que la hipótesis del prototipo se examinó en serio y cayó por análisis de ingeniería, no por descarte.

«Although the extension of all four legs varied, given the rough terrain, the diagonals of the quadrilateral figure they formed intersected exactly at a right angle.» — el hallazgo geométrico del que cuelga todo el capítulo, sacado de las huellas dibujadas por la policía.

«This was another technical feature that could not have been anticipated by Lonnie Zamora or anyone else involved.» — el argumento con que lo usan contra la hipótesis de montaje: el testigo no podía haber previsto ese rasgo.

«In the case of Socorro, it meant that the figure carefully drawn at the site by the police was a very special case: on their map the center of the circle in question was found to be directly over burn no.1, corresponding to the center of gravity of the landing object.» — lo que se sigue del teorema aplicado a ese dibujo: el centro del círculo cae sobre la quemadura número uno.

«Whatever landed at Socorro was more sophisticated than anything the US sent to the Moon before or after 1964.» — la conclusión que sacan de la comparación con las patas del Surveyor lunar, dicha sin condicional.

«Some of the remaining puzzles about the Socorro landing might be solved if we had more extensive evidence of the marks, including footprints and burn marks on plants, in the form of detailed photographs of the site.» — lo que declaran que falta para cerrar el caso, y que es material fotográfico que existió.

«The gentle reader will recall that the presence of radiation had been immediately, and very professionally tested on the first day—not an unusual or difficult thing to do when you live less than an hour away from the world’s first Atomic Test Site—and there was no radioactivity.» — desmontan con esto la excusa que se dio para la pérdida del carrete de fotos.

«Officials were simply lying all the way down the line.» — su veredicto sobre esa cadena de explicaciones, en una línea y sin atenuante.

«He saw himself as a censor but also as a servant of science, generally starting from unsolved, neglected but authentic anomalies with real observers, reviewed and published in the scientific press, such as dozens of observations of unexplained luminous objects tracked (but too often ignored or superficially brushed off) by professional astronomers, and he urged that they be studied.» — así leen a Charles Fort: no como coleccionista de rarezas sino como alguien que pedía que las anomalías publicadas se estudiaran.

«Niels Bohr, decades later, would support that approach when he taught that “there can be no science without an anomaly.”» — apoyan esa lectura de la anomalía en una frase que le atribuyen a Bohr, y es el mismo criterio del epígrafe de Wilbert Smith que abre la conclusión.

«On the contrary, the Agency had soberly stated that it “couldn’t confirm or deny the existence of records responsive to the request.”» — corrigen la lectura de la respuesta de la CIA: no confirmó nada, y la fórmula es la de rigor.

«The reader should note that I am not excluding the possibility that advanced rigid balloons might have been tested around the White Sands facility in 1965:» — dejan expresamente abierta la hipótesis del globo rígido experimental antes de argumentar contra ella.

«By the time detailed inspection of the site had been conducted, particularly by State Trooper Ted Jordan in his highly professional, meticulous inspection of the environment, multiple pieces of evidence negated the balloon idea but they only came out later, and researchers like Mr. Easton may be forgiven since they did not have convenient access to them.» — desmontan la hipótesis del globo y a la vez disculpan a quien la sostuvo, por falta de acceso a los datos.

«It would take a lot of hot air to lift such a craft, a lot more than it does to float another reassuring UFO “final explanation” in the local paper, or in a skeptics’ magazine far away from the actual scene, on another continent.» — el remate irónico contra las explicaciones finales escritas lejos del sitio.

«The insignia remains one of the many interesting puzzles about the Zamora case.» — dejan el asunto de la insignia sin resolver y lo dicen así.

«And third, we have evidence that a highly-competent source, a senior Army officer, a combat veteran specialized in military vehicle engineering, experienced the total failure of the car he was driving on the White Sands range while a light attached to a flying object increased in intensity and illuminated his position, an hour after the Lonnie Zamora sighting and on the trajectory reported by the policeman.» — el testimonio independiente que le oponen a toda explicación convencional: un vehículo parado bajo una luz, una hora después y sobre la misma trayectoria.

«None of this is hearsay, but direct testimony by the principals, on the record.» — el estatuto que le dan a esas declaraciones, que es el criterio que aplican en todo el libro.

«I can find no trace that it was ever reported to Dr. Hynek, or to Project Blue Book.» — y a la vez consignan que ese testimonio nunca llegó al canal oficial.

«And he went on to explain that the particles that were clinging to the rock’s surface contained zinc and iron, but the ratios did not correspond to any material known to be manufactured on earth, at least per the charts at Goddard, which were the most complete in the world.» — el primer resultado del análisis de la roca de Socorro, en boca del doctor Frankel y con su propia acotación sobre el alcance de las tablas.

«Not only that, he said, but “everything you were told earlier by NASA was a mistake. The sample was determined to be silica, SiO2.”» — la retractación posterior, que es el punto donde la cadena de análisis se rompe.

«Any NASA chemist who was so confused as to analyze a mundane sample of ordinary silica and conclude it was composed of zinc and iron, plus those undisclosed “trace elements,” should have been reassigned to the maintenance of the Xerox machines.» — el argumento con que descartan esa retractación es de incompetencia imposible, y lo dicen con sarcasmo.

«it appears that Dr. Frankel and his NASA colleagues may have been sincere in their interest in the Socorro metallic evidence, but they were caught in demands from an unspecified higher authority.» — se abstienen de acusar a los científicos y dejan la autoridad superior sin nombre, que es como tratan el secreto en todo el libro.

«The situation seems to change a bit today, as some highly credible admissions by government insiders have been allowed and a few files opened, along with interesting videos of unexplained objects posted on the Internet.» — su balance del presente, con los verbos en condicional.

«But the academic community has yet to take notice.» — y el reparo que le ponen a ese balance.

«I have been trained to look for patterns— in astronomy, in medicine, in business—rather than extrapolating from a single observation, no matter how interesting.» — su criterio de trabajo declarado: el patrón antes que el caso suelto, por interesante que sea.

«The first major mistake is to assume that the phenomenon, if real, must consist in space-travelling Aliens from another planet—to the exclusion of any other possibility;» — el primero de los dos errores que le imputan al campo, y es la exclusividad de la hipótesis extraterrestre.

«For centuries, academic astronomers had denied that stones could fall from the sky, blaming the reports on the supposed stupidity of farmers who kept picking up strange stones: everything seemed to tell them, in everyday life, that there were no stones in the sky.» — el precedente histórico con que defienden a los testigos rurales: los meteoritos negados por la astronomía académica.

«A few happy accidents have advanced science because some patterns had been cleverly recognized and documented, even if scientists denied their significance.» — la lección que sacan de ese precedente para su propio material.

«For that reason alone, I have been on the lookout for cases bearing similar characteristics to those of Officer Lonnie Zamora’s report in Socorro in 1964 and those of Mr. Jose Padilla’s sighting in San Antonio in 1945.» — declaran el criterio con que eligieron los casos que comparan, que es de rasgos y no de conclusión.

«The Advisory committee of the CNES (40) on which I currently serve in Paris has not forgotten the case, which remains in its files as one of the prominent “Unidentified” episodes that have resisted all attempts at rationalization.» — el estatuto oficial que tiene el caso de Valensole en el archivo francés, y la pertenencia que Vallée declara a ese comité.

«The first reaction in a single-witness close encounter (testis unus, testis nullus, as Dr. Hynek had said) is to blame the event on hallucinations or hoaxing.» — vuelven sobre la máxima del testigo único, esta vez para el caso francés.

«An Alouette would have woken up the whole village, and nobody from the Army had even bothered to come over to the field and examine the marks they had recorded.» — el argumento contra la explicación militar del helicóptero, y la desidia que le imputan al Ejército francés.

«Like Mr. Padilla, perhaps he found it necessary to think of them as “men” because they seemed to have expressions and behaviors that he could recognize, and with which he felt comfortable.» — la explicación que proponen para que dos testigos de continentes distintos insistan en llamar hombres a las criaturas, formulada como conjetura.

«The records of the French Space Agency show that four other branches of the government took the initial Gendarmerie report very seriously and conducted investigations of their own.» — cuántas dependencias del Estado francés investigaron el caso, según los archivos de la agencia espacial.

«All those investigations reached negative results.» — el resultado de todas ellas, dicho sin matiz.

«But there was something more, the impression he’d been awakened to a range of perceptions or abilities he’d ignored before his experience, and he was still puzzled by it.» — lo que dicen haber percibido en el testigo francés: percepciones nuevas que él mismo no entendía; la observación es impresión suya y la marcan como tal.

«He told us about a vision of his father’s death, and other premonitory dreams that had taken him by surprise.» — el material premonitorio que el testigo les contó queda consignado sin comentario ni encuadre.

«There is a rampant assumption, throughout the history of ufology, that witnesses are always naïve and transparent, and truthful with authorities.» — la suposición que le imputan al campo entero sobre sus propios testigos.

«That may be true in some cases, but when one touches on complex observations in a sophisticated environment like Provence, it takes more than a confusing questionnaire and a phone call from Paris to bring out the intimate truth about the witnesses’ impressions, their doubts, and their awareness of changes within themselves.» — lo que hace falta, según ellos, para llegar a lo que un testigo guarda: trato largo, y no cuestionario.

«All of which has led me to believe, over the years, that governments and their discreet contractors, even military Intelligence and the masters of aerospace, know a lot less than they think they do, or pretend they do, about the real phenomenon, its origin, and its designs.» — la posición que sostiene sobre lo que el Estado sabe del fenómeno, que es menos de lo que aparenta.

«Similarly, the press articles state that he saw the object and the occupants for 90 seconds. That’s obviously not true, but Maurice Masse did say that in his early testimony, probably to minimize the importance of his experience and the pressures placed on him, since he had little trust in his interviewers.» — consignan que el testigo mintió sobre la duración, y le atribuyen el motivo: desconfianza en quien lo interrogaba.

«Maurice Masse had also lied about the two beings when he told the Gendarmes they had hair like us, as he compared their size to children, who are never bald.» — segunda mentira consignada del mismo testigo, sobre el aspecto de los seres.

«The main “detail” Maurice Masse withheld from everyone for several days had to do with the paralysis that froze him to the spot when one of the occupants pointed a small device at him before flying away.» — y lo que calló varios días, que es justo el episodio central del caso.

«Not only about the fact that—as in Socorro—the two beings had left footprints, but the fact that he went back to the site alone and erased those footprints himself.» — el testigo destruyó él mismo la evidencia física del caso, y el libro lo consigna sin suavizarlo.

«The French countryside can be very closed-mouth about local happenings, a social trait that reflects centuries of distrust with government and with authority of every kind, and gives the French village life its special flavor.» — cómo explican el silencio de la comarca francesa, en clave de desconfianza histórica hacia la autoridad.

«Again, what we saw there was a juxtaposition, if not a permanent undeclared conflict, between two very different cultures.» — el mismo diagnóstico cultural que hicieron para Nuevo México, repetido para Provenza.

«Calling it by that term is a misnomer: If Masse had been subjected to a paralyzing weapon, he would have fallen down and his heart might have been affected.» — corrigen el término consagrado del caso y dan la razón fisiológica.

«What actually happened was incapacitation, not paralysis. It was triggered when one of the beings took a small device from his belt and pointed it at him as he emerged from the vineyard and faced them, still assuming the craft was some sort of French Army prototype.» — la distinción que proponen, con el detalle de que el testigo seguía creyendo que era un prototipo del Ejército.

«One should keep in mind that the 1965 device held by the “occupant” was the size of a cigarette lighter... and had no visible power supply.» — el dato que retienen del artefacto, con la ausencia de fuente de energía como rasgo.

«In all three cases the witnesses felt unafraid of “them,” or even reported a sense that “they” had good intentions towards us, although they couldn’t ascribe this impression to anything in particular.» — el rasgo común que encuentran entre San Antonio, Socorro y Valensole, y que los testigos no saben fundar.

«Valensole was the only case (of the three) where a weapon (non-lethal) was used.» — la diferencia que marcan entre los tres casos comparados.

«To most American ufologists, who insist on taking such observations strictly at the first degree (“If it looks like a spacecraft, it must be a spacecraft”), these features must be a proof that we are visited by travelers from somewhere.» — la lectura literal que le imputan a la ufología estadounidense, con su regla de lectura entre comillas del propio libro.

«In America, however, our research culture is such that one must present a practical hypothesis to be tested before anyone will award you a contract or a grant, so this has resulted in almost no fundamental academic research on the subject since 1945.» — la explicación institucional que dan al vacío académico: sin hipótesis contrastable no hay financiamiento.

«In the rest of the world, there has been considerable theoretical speculation and extensive documentation of events, with a superior appreciation of the importance of historical reports, but the organizational reaction has been similar, with no incentive to fund active research in the field, other than government-controlled and government-censored teams of supervised volunteers, like the French group under the CNES space agency, or very specialized, necessarily narrow-focused classified studies, starting with collected hardware.» — el balance del resto del mundo, donde reconocen mejor tratamiento de los reportes históricos y la misma falta de financiamiento.

«To us, it seems that the phenomenon (and in particular the three detailed cases we have reviewed here) functions with reference to a more complex strategy.» — aquí pasan de la crítica a su propia tesis, y la enuncian con el verbo atenuado.

«If that is true, then it’s unlikely that we will learn anything really useful or operational about the phenomenon as long as our studies, overt or secret, only concern themselves with the overt technology on the scene, as staged for our benefit, and framed for our physics.» — el corolario metodológico: la tecnología visible estaría puesta para nosotros, y estudiarla sola no llevaría a nada.

«We believe the phenomenon is not trying to teach us physics or advanced propulsion, although most researchers will keep trying to extract such data, or turn it into new weapons.» — la afirmación más fuerte del libro sobre el fenómeno, y va en primera persona del plural: no estaría enseñando física.

«Instead, we believe it is trying to teach us to transcend our own humanity.» — y su continuación, que es lo único que el libro pone en lugar de la hipótesis tecnológica; queda enunciado y sin desarrollar.

«toxic mental cloud of our own making, when our civilization reaches its point of singularity.» — la alternativa con que cierran esa misma frase, y que arranca al pie de la plana anterior con un perecer: el destino contrario a trascender la propia humanidad.

«We didn’t record the conversation, but it struck me deeply enough, and it’s still recent enough, for me to reconstruct it.» — declaran que el diálogo final entre los dos coautores está reconstruido de memoria y no grabado, que es la misma técnica del diálogo del prólogo con Brinkley.

«So I’d finally closed that loop, and knew I could stand more firmly on what I’d written.» — cómo justifican el valor de haber recorrido el terreno ellos mismos antes de escribir.

«You couldn’t understand anything about the present, standing there within a few miles of the site of an atom bomb blast, without reconstructing, documenting and analyzing the tiny details of the deeper past; and it was an open book, if only you troubled to read it.» — la regla de lectura del lugar que enuncian: el presente del sitio no se entiende sin reconstruir su pasado.

«Even Ground Zero was rooted in rich layers of memories the scientists hadn’t had time, or taken the time, to recognize.» — el reproche a los científicos del sitio es de desatención a la memoria del lugar, no de secreto.

«The desert wasn’t empty. People may have passed on, the Tribes may have migrated across the mountains to Arizona, but you could still interrogate the landscape and get answers, if you only attuned your mind to the scale of things in the well of time.» — lo más cercano a una fórmula de lectura del paisaje que el libro se permite, y va sin marco tradicional detrás.

«That informal introduction already told us a lot: Evidently, Sabrina had retained a vivid memory of her days in San Antonio and her view of the site.» — cómo evalúan a la tercera testigo antes de recoger su testimonio.

«At that point Sabrina’s testimony was beginning to fill the gaps we had noted, regarding the post-war era in San Antonio, and it all made sense: the dying vegetation, the scary appearance of the landscape after the crash, although it remained unclear for us whether the burned area was a result of that episode, or an unrelated lightning strike and fire.» — consignan lo que el nuevo testimonio cubre y lo que sigue sin cubrir, con la alternativa del rayo puesta en la misma frase.

«We did know, however, as any visitor to that part of New Mexico can observe, that plants remained very weak and the large trees used by the Army to camouflage the craft in 1945 had never grown back.» — el dato de terreno que sí dan por establecido, y que cualquiera puede comprobar.

«Sabrina, who doesn’t know much physics, had just told Paola something that changed the course of our investigation.» — marcan el punto donde el testimonio de la tercera testigo les cambia la investigación, y de paso su falta de formación técnica como garantía.

«Not only did she describe the same strange “memory metal” that would be reported at Roswell two years later, but she was telling us about something else: bundles of fiber that glowed brightly enough, seven years after the crash, to be visible in the dark.» — los dos rasgos que retienen de ese testimonio: el metal con memoria de forma y unas fibras que aún brillaban siete años después.

«One of the possible conclusions (which we couldn’t verify without getting some of the material) was that it was radioactive; and that had implications for the nature of the craft:» — la hipótesis de radiactividad que sacan de ahí, declarada como no verificada por falta de material.

«The idea of the kids picking up bundles of fibers from a crashed vehicle that looked like a weird spaceship, and giving them away to their friends and neighbors to decorate Christmas trees, boggles the mind just a little.» — consignan el destino doméstico del material con la extrañeza puesta por delante, y sin sacar consecuencia.

«They kept talking about the angel hair, which they recalled clearly, but they thought it was just filler material between the panels, or insulation.» — consignan que los propios testigos daban del material la explicación más prosaica.

«What our third witness told Paola also confirms that Security services were still busy, searching for “something,” years after the craft itself had been retrieved—provoking the angry scene at the home of Faustino Padilla when they sneaked in through the back door.» — lo que la tercera testigo añade al caso: que la búsqueda oficial siguió años después de retirado el objeto.

«They were not from the local police or even the State Police, which wouldn’t arrive in a “big Jeep” and would hardly behave this way, casually invading a peaceful citizen’s residence.» — su inferencia sobre quiénes eran esos visitantes, hecha por el vehículo y la conducta y sin nombrar dependencia.

«An expert we consulted about those observations was struck by Sabrina’s report that the foil was conducting heat the way it did: it felt cool against her face on a hot New Mexico day, suggesting that the material controlled heat flow throughout its surface.» — la propiedad térmica que retienen del testimonio, con la lectura del experto consultado y no propia.

«There are no Aliens in the story.» — lo que retienen de la novela de los Strugatski que da título al capítulo: la basura queda y los visitantes no aparecen.

«The nature of these discards, products of an utterly alien technology, defies most earthly logic, to say nothing of earthy analytical science, and their potential is limitless.» — la analogía literaria que le dan a su propio caso: objetos abandonados cuya lógica no es la nuestra.

«We quickly agreed the bracket was not unusual in composition although we disagreed on its purpose.» — consignan el desacuerdo dentro de su propio equipo, sin resolverlo.

«My friends thought it might be part of the original equipment aboard the craft, while I argued it might have been brought in by the soldiers to facilitate their work of recovery inside the vehicle.» — las dos hipótesis en juego sobre el soporte, con la del propio Vallée puesta del lado prosaico.

«Sabrina was surprised that Paola was calling her, because she’d heard on the phone from “someone” that we wouldn’t come to record her detailed testimony after all.» — el episodio de interferencia que relatan: alguien llamó a la testigo para cancelar la entrevista en nombre de ellos.

«It has long been clear that rights to privacy have been silently compromised, decades ago, without much resistance.» — cómo encuadran la vigilancia que dicen haber sufrido: como condición general y no como persecución propia.

«We decided that this incident, which demonstrated that “someone” was paying close attention to the ongoing study, would not push us to resort» — la decisión que toman ante esa vigilancia es no cambiar de método; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«It also established that any samples casually thrown away by the soldiers in a crevice in the earthen dam would be unreachable now, under some twenty feet of tightly-packed dirt, with a pond on top of it.» — el muro definitivo del caso: lo que quedara en el sitio está bajo seis metros de tierra compactada y un estanque.

«But this also brought up the subsequent visits by the military, coming back to the site years after the main event, for reasons we couldn’t clearly understand.» — dejan sin explicación las visitas militares posteriores, en vez de proponerles una intención.

«While it isn’t particularly concerning, it shows that the area was being watched continuously and that access to the isolated site was being maintained.» — lo que sí dan por establecido de esas visitas, con la reserva puesta delante.

«Actually we now know that Jose never told Faustino he had extracted the “bracket.”» — corrigen a su propia testigo con lo que saben por otro testigo, y lo dicen en el cuerpo del capítulo.

«Sabrina may not have been aware of the actual sequence.» — la acotación con que cierran esa corrección, sin quitarle valor al testimonio.

«After the bracket and the fiber clusters, we had yet to fill the gaps in our knowledge of two other items, namely the “foil” and what had become known as the “pyramid,” two items for which we were at pains to guess the possible function.» — el balance de los cuatro objetos del caso: de dos de ellos no saben ni para qué servían.

«While it may not be directly related to the crash or its aftermath, it completes the picture of what New Mexico was like after World War Two, and it brings to life the facts of life in rural America that may be hard to imagine for us now, in the world of abundance of the twenty-first century.» — por qué conservan un episodio que ellos mismos dicen que puede no tener relación con el caso: por lo que muestra de la vida rural de posguerra.

«If those rocks were ordinary stones that had been irradiated by the 1945 explosion, that means they were still a source of harmful radiation fifteen years later!» — la hipótesis que sacan del episodio de las piedras, y es de radiación residual, no de material anómalo.

«Sabrina’s Grandmother may have saved her life when she ordered her to take them back to the cemetery.» — con eso le dan una consecuencia física a una prohibición dicha en términos de muertos, y no discuten el marco de la abuela.

«When I first held the bracket in my hands, I entertained the idea that it had been set up by the soldiers to assist in the recovery and cleanup of the crashed vehicle, perhaps as part of an improvised electrical energy supply, but a senior NASA engineer I consulted, who followed the research Paola and I conducted at the site, disagreed, observing that the bracket... ...was reported to be part of the circular copper colored plate that was designed-in to the vehicle.» — exponen su propia hipótesis inicial y la del ingeniero de la NASA que los contradice, sin quedarse con ninguna.

«The only way that could happen is if the bracket was designed by whomever operated or otherwise had access to the vehicle.» — la consecuencia de esa segunda hipótesis, que devuelve la pieza al lado de quien operaba el vehículo.

«But the vehicle design was way beyond the scientific and technological knowledge of the time and place.» — el juicio que sostienen sobre el vehículo, dicho sin nombrar origen.

«The suggestion must be considered that recovered material from UFOs may actually have inspired, or accelerated, classified projects to implement such properties, but the idea of shape preservation was not beyond American or German engineering in the 1950s, and perhaps before.» — admiten a examen la hipótesis de la ingeniería inversa y en la misma frase le quitan necesidad, porque la propiedad ya era alcanzable.

«The full story of the crash on the Padilla Ranch is likely to remain a closely-held secret for a while.» — con qué expectativa cierran su propio libro, y es que el caso siga cerrado.

«The fact that we have recovered and published his testimony, along with that of Mr. Remigio Baca, completed by that of Mrs. Sabrina Padilla, is the result of a series of chance occurrences that involve a simple, independent genealogy search.» — le atribuyen su propio libro a una serie de casualidades, y no a una investigación planificada.

«We hold a material artifact Mr. Padilla extracted from inside the craft, simple to explain yet loaded with long-term unanswered questions, but that is irrelevant to eventual revelation of the reality of the event.» — declaran irrelevante para la prueba del hecho la única pieza material que tienen en custodia.

«That reality can continue to be denied or safely distorted for a long time.» — y lo que se sigue de eso para la suerte del caso.

«We do have the right to ask: A higher good, for whom?» — la única exigencia política que se permiten sobre el secreto, y va en forma de pregunta.

«From a physical point of view, only a very small group seems to have an approximation of the real thing: Not the usual military or intelligence agencies so often accused of hiding “the truth,” even if each of them does guard its own best information and hides some bits of material in the basement, like Jose and Reme did with their precious Tesoro.» — desplazan el secreto de las agencias grandes a un grupo chico, y comparan la conducta institucional con la de dos niños escondiendo su tesoro.

«What the Padilla Ranch teaches us is that the real secret isn’t readily operational, waiting for us in the vaults of the Intelligence community or the Pentagon, just waiting for some bureaucrat to pull out the Declassified stamp and triumphantly slam it on the document to the applause of an appreciating public;» — la tesis que sacan del caso para el asunto del secreto: no habría un expediente listo para desclasificar.

«But even our cherished Silicon Valley is a long way from practical-scale, reliable antigravity products;» — la acotación técnica con que frenan la lectura de tecnología ya lograda.

«It was only in 1980 that the ranchers found out that the real reason for those visits by Army Intelligence had to do with observing them, to document the human effects of the bomb on them and on their kids.» — el dato con que cierran el asunto nuclear del libro: las visitas del Ejército a los rancheros eran seguimiento médico encubierto.

«When high-level Canadian Government scientist Wilbert Smith, who arguably did have the need-to-know about the situation (his services had gathered their own hard evidence from crashes in Canada), was told that the real secret was held “higher than the Manhattan Project,” implying it would be politically awkward to ask any more questions on behalf of Ottawa, he was respectfully but firmly presented with a simple truth.» — cómo introducen la fórmula del secreto por encima del Proyecto Manhattan, con la reserva del verbo en el inciso.

«At the time, the media were told all the cases were just visual sightings, and Dr. Donald Menzel, of Harvard College Observatory, a leading astrophysicist (and former mentor of Dr. Hynek) found it convenient to “explain” the cases before the national media as optical illusions, essentially mirages due to a temperature inversion.» — nombran a Donald Menzel, antiguo mentor de Hynek, como quien dio la explicación pública de espejismos.

«And the real reason it “detached itself” was that the Navy pilot in question shot the Hell out of it after receiving the authorization to fire at the flying disk when it penetrated the most heavily protected area in the United States, a fact that has been kept from the highly malleable American media for well over a half century.» — la versión que sostienen del caso de Washington de 1952, con un disparo autorizado como origen del fragmento.

«I was in Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s office at Northwestern University in April 1965 when he arrived back from Washington, where he’d confronted then-Congressman Donald Rumsfeld about his need for higher-level information about what the government actually knew. Hynek was distraught and angry, because he knew the subject was about to escalate in the halls of Congress. “Doctor, you do NOT have the need-to-know,” the future Defense Secretary had told him, showing him the door of his office--and throwing him to the skeptical wolves in the academic community and the hecklers among the media.» — el episodio con Donald Rumsfeld que cuenta como testigo presencial, y la consecuencia que le atribuye para Hynek.

«According to various reports, on December 16, 2002, the Director for Intelligence for The Joint Chiefs of Staff, (“J2”), Admiral Thomas Ray Wilson agreed to meet with one of my colleagues from the NIDS (49) research group, physicist Eric Davis (50).» — introducen el caso Wilson con la fórmula de reportes varios, que es como marcan lo que no verificaron ellos.

«There, Wilson reportedly explained to Dr. Davis how, at a meeting with Navy Lt-Commander Willard Miller and others on April 9, 1997, he had learned that there were indeed “deep black” organizations in the US actively studying Alien technologies and bodies.» — el contenido de ese testimonio queda consignado con adverbio de reserva, y el libro no lo hace suyo.

«According to Dr. Davis, Wilson was told that if he pursued his investigation, three things would happen to him: He would never be named Director of DIA; he would be forcibly retired early; and he would lose one or two stars.» — la amenaza que registran en ese relato, con la fuente nombrada.

«Here again, while the situation seems absurdly beyond everything we have been taught about the workings of our government, the fact is that we don’t know the nature of what is being hidden.» — la abstención con que cierran el caso Wilson: reconocen que no saben qué se oculta.

«Personally, I am reconciled with the idea of never knowing what those companies are hiding.» — la posición personal de Vallée sobre el secreto industrial, que es de renuncia y no de reclamo.

«The history of this research teaches us that most of the symbols in that exchange remain to be deciphered; the technical folks have remained focused on technical things, arguing about such current concepts as quantum mechanics or relativity, thereby missing the main point entirely.» — la palabra símbolos aparece aquí para lo que ocurre entre el fenómeno y quien lo mira, y les sirve para acusar de miopía al enfoque técnico.

«And “snow jobs” they did give us: from the “experimental weather balloon” to the mysterious “Air Force Pogo Stick”» — enumeran las explicaciones oficiales que consideran fabricadas; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«The only real mystery is why somebody, in today’s complicated political world, finds it politically astute to go on inventing such “explanations,” and planting them in publications sold as factual reporting to the unsuspecting American public.» — el misterio que les queda no es el objeto sino la industria de explicaciones falsas vendidas como reportaje.

«Paola and I can only concur with Officer Jordan who “doesn’t think anybody else knows what it is.”» — con esto se alinean los dos coautores, y la posición que adoptan es la ignorancia declarada de un policía.

«When you were a cute toddler, your mother, as the ultimate authority in your world, may have disclosed a big, urgent secret to you: She said that a small non-human being, a magical character, a clever Rabbit, had come out of his secret lair below the ground; he had gone around before dawn with a basket of bright sugary treats and had scattered them across the backyard.» — la analogía con que desarman la promesa de divulgación: el conejo mágico anunciado por la autoridad de la casa.

«We have told this story because we believe the public’s expectation of “disclosure” is a fallacy, just as our childhood hopes of seeing the Magic Rabbit was a (happy, warm, reassuring) fallacy.» — y el remate de la analogía, que es la tesis del capítulo final sobre la divulgación.

«In the last few years, the Keepers of the Secrets have created a few legal and social instruments, media tools through which they can control leaks of information when they occur: The most practical channel to disguise and redirect such a leak is to encourage public “research,” outwardly dedicated to genuine investigation of UFO reality, yet sufficiently embedded in the secretive structure of the modern government bureaucracy to continue shielding the most threatening or egregious aspects of whatever may be accidentally uncovered.» — describen el mecanismo que le atribuyen a los custodios: alentar investigación pública para encauzar las filtraciones.

«Such misinformation is a pollutant in the civic discourse and the pursuit of human research, and an affront to the public’s legitimate right to share in the knowledge of government officials, when it can have an impact on the conduct of life.» — el daño que le atribuyen a la desinformación es civil antes que científico.

«We don’t know what happened to the three creatures seen by Jose Padilla; we don’t understand what an ordinary low-tech human device like the stolen bracket was doing, attached to that inside panel; we have no data to elaborate hypotheses about the propulsion of the craft.» — la lista de lo que declaran no saber al cerrar el libro, en tres puntos y sin atenuante.

«In fact, scientists reading this book would be justified to ask, “What kind of Aliens would come from the other end of the galaxy, only to bump into a radio relay and crash in the shrubbery?”» — vuelven a poner la objeción más dura contra su propio caso, y siguen sin responderla.

«The facile explanation ufologists continue to put forward— convenient visitors from hypothetical planets “out there,” who just happen to be humanoid like us, and breathe our air» — dan por agotada la hipótesis del visitante planetario humanoide; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Of course it does explain everything, because there is no limit to miracles if you assume infinity is on your side.» — la objeción de fondo que le hacen a esa hipótesis: explica todo porque no se puede refutar.

«In a paper Dr. Eric Davis and I published in 2003, titled “Incommensurability, Orthodoxy and the Physics of High Strangeness: A 6-layer Model for Anomalous Phenomena.” the last sentence stated: “To test more fully the hypothesis that unidentified aerial phenomena are both physical and psychic in nature, we need much better investigations, a great upgrading of data quality, and a more informed analysis not only of the object being described, but of the impact of the observation on the witnesses and their social environment.» — la formulación que citan de su propio artículo de 2003 pone los fenómenos como físicos y psíquicos a la vez, y pide medir el impacto sobre el testigo y su entorno social; es lo más cerca que el libro llega a su marco anterior.

«Note: Going one step further, a brilliant MIT computer scientist and entrepreneur named Rizwan Virk has suggested that what we experience as the physical universe may be a giant simulation created by far advanced minds, for reasons of their own.» — la hipótesis de la simulación entra al libro en nota y atribuida a Rizwan Virk, sin que los autores la adopten.

«Contrary to a common belief, it wasn’t Boston or Silicon Valley that was the cradle of American Science in the twentieth century, but the Midwest with its deep roots in European culture,» — la corrección histórica con que abren el epílogo sobre dónde estuvo la ciencia estadounidense del siglo veinte; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Enrico didn’t join any of these groups. He didn’t think you could ever stop the progress of knowledge itself: it will always find a way to come to the surface, he said.» — la posición que le atribuyen a Fermi ante los movimientos de científicos: el conocimiento no se detiene.

«Enrico Fermi didn’t join: He thought humanity wasn’t mature enough for world governance, and that the main problem of war didn’t reside in the weapons anyway, but in individual nations’ willingness to use them, and to risk suffering the known consequences made very plain in Hiroshima, for everyone to see.» — y su argumento contra el gobierno mundial, que el libro recoge sin discutirlo.

«Only in the Cuban crisis of the Bay of Pigs, in October 1962, did the world come within minutes of a nuclear exchange that could have deteriorated into World War Three, except for the heroic determination of one Soviet naval officer, Commander Vasili Archipov.» — el episodio nuclear que ponen como más cercano al desastre; nombran Bahía de Cochinos donde el suceso de octubre de 1962 es la crisis de los misiles.

«Oppenheimer may not have been told about what Jose Padilla had seen.» — la abstención sobre si el director del proyecto llegó a saber del caso, dicha en condicional.

«A physicist friend of mine, now employed on projects involving national security, tells me he’s confirmed that statement by Wilbur Smith, asserting that the UFO matter was classified very high, so high that there is no way Paola and I could be briefed by the right specialists on the true nature of the phenomenon.» — consignan que se les dijo que no podían ser informados, y de quién vino el aviso.

«I am sure he is right about the general scope of the problem, except that in this particular case we have already been briefed, very fully and carefully, at length and on site, by three ordinary people with extraordinary courage, two of whom happened to be there, observed the so-called “phenomenon” as it landed, and recovered some of the hard evidence.» — la respuesta que le dan a ese aviso: su información viene de tres personas comunes, y la ponen por encima de cualquier informe reservado.

«We don’t pretend to have unveiled the full significance of what happened near San Antonito.» — la abstención con que cierran el epílogo, y es la última posición del libro sobre su propio alcance.

«Although pointedly ignored by academic scientists, these incidents are rich with images that have been subliminally injected into our collective psyche and actually amplified by the studious neglect of our leading intellectuals.» — la única vez que el libro dice psique colectiva, y le atribuye al desdén académico haber amplificado esas imágenes en vez de contenerlas.

«Because of the pressing enigma those undeniable cases present, the story of the Trinity UFO crash remains as a document in human history that we must keep reading, without ever the luxury of firmly turning the page, and closing the book.» — la última frase del cuerpo del libro, que niega expresamente el cierre del caso.

«Sir Arthur Lundahl (1915-1992), recognized as the key organizer of the US post-World War Two image intelligence capability, guided me in the interpretation of some of the unpublished events surrounding the interception of UFOs by the US military.» — en los agradecimientos nombran a sus informantes; el primero es el organizador de la inteligencia fotográfica estadounidense de posguerra.

«Mr. Robert Chartrand, a former Naval officer and senior analyst at the Congressional Research Service, tutored me in an understanding of the various structures (such as SAPOC) supervising the complex system of companies controlling the truth about recovered UFO structures.» — nombran también a quien les explicó la estructura de empresas que custodiaría el asunto, con la sigla que el libro no desarrolla.

«Contrary to all the colorful posturing on television, and to the high visibility of a few “cutouts” and all the hopeful blogging in the Internet about “disclosure,” the real status of the hard data is not about to be published,» — repiten en los agradecimientos su tesis sobre la divulgación; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Perhaps our book will change that reality.» — lo único que se permiten esperar de su propio libro, y va en condicional.

«Professor Garry Nolan, Stanford University School of Medicine, for many stimulating discussions about the phenomenon, and for important advice in proper protocol for chemical analysis and plant pathology study.» — consignan de quién tomaron el protocolo de análisis químico y de patología vegetal.

«However, in a book published in 1983 (George Adamski, the Untold Story, with Lou Zinsstag), Timothy Good presents a more nuanced assessment, arguing that the twisted travelogues and questionable photographs were perhaps designed to inspire an early fascination with space, either under the influence of esoteric ideas popular in Southern California, or prompted by “agents” from undisclosed parts of the US military.» — la única vez que el libro admite ideas esotéricas como explicación posible de algo, y va en nota, atribuida a Timothy Good y sobre Adamski.

«In his 1977 book, The UFO Experience, Hynek said that he enjoyed his role as a debunker for the Air Force.» — consignan en nota la autocrítica de Hynek sobre su propio papel inicial.

«In November 1978, Hynek presented a statement on UFOs before the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of himself, Jacques Vallée, and Claude Poher.» — la nota fecha la comparecencia de Hynek ante la Asamblea General en nombre suyo, de Vallée y de Poher.

«It was his epoch-making experiments at the University of Rome in 1934 that led directly to the discovery of uranium fission.» — la nota biográfica de Fermi, que es el otro hilo del libro.

«Szilard was despised by General Groves and those who wished to deploy the weapon. They ultimately coerced Oppenheimer into suppressing the petition to President Truman.» — la nota sobre la petición de los científicos contra el uso de la bomba, y quién la suprimió.

«Project Serpo is an alleged top-secret exchange program between the US and an alien planet by that name.» — definen en nota el engaño que denuncian en el cuerpo, para que el lector pueda ubicarlo.

«It is worth noting that Doty has also been employed by some UFO research projects in Austin and Las Vegas and has been involved in circulating UFO conspiracy yarns.» — nombran en nota a quien atribuyen la circulación de esas historias, y su vínculo con proyectos de investigación.

«The way Dr. Oppenheimer was treated by the US Security establishment has left its indelible mark upon the academic world and has discouraged many scientists and intellectuals from dealing with US classified agencies which they see as increasingly clannish and often corrupt.» — la nota le adjudica al caso Oppenheimer el alejamiento duradero de los académicos respecto de las agencias clasificadas.

«obvious hoaxes like the Serpo hoax and the convoluted series of MJ-12 “revelations” (there was a real MJ-12 at one time, but it wasn’t dealing with the same topics) have further discouraged many scientists from risking their otherwise impeccable careers “chasing shadows.”» — y le suma a los engaños del campo la misma responsabilidad, con la acotación de que hubo un MJ-12 real dedicado a otra cosa.

«The scientists themselves, under Oppenheimer, may not have been told about the UFO crash.» — la abstención sobre lo que supieron los físicos del proyecto, repetida en nota.

«What makes us wonder about this is the fact that Dr. Phillip Morrison, one of the elite physicists in the group, later commented about UFOs in the pages of the prestigious Science Magazine, arguing that reported “landings” of such objects could not be attributed to Alien visitors because the supposed craft did not leave the damage or chemical residues one would expect from an interstellar rocket taking off...» — el argumento de otro físico del proyecto contra los aterrizajes, expuesto para poder objetarlo.

«If his letter was not written as a disinformation plot at the instigation of the military, it shows a surprising lack of technical acumen in a scientist who contributed to building the first atom bomb.» — la alternativa que dejan abierta sobre esa carta: desinformación deliberada o falta de criterio técnico.

«He brought his Naval Academy classmate Vice-admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, first head of the CIA, as Chairman.» — la nota documenta quién presidía la principal organización civil del campo, y quién lo reemplazó.

«Hillenkoetter left the board in Feb 1962 and was replaced by a former covert CIA high official, Joseph Bryan III, the CIA’s first Chief of Political & Psychological Warfare.» — el sucesor venía de la guerra política y psicológica de la misma agencia, y el dato queda consignado sin conclusión.

«Smith eventually concluded that UFOs were probably extraterrestrial in origin and likely operated by manipulation of magnetism.» — la conclusión de Wilbert Smith, cuyos epígrafes abren dos partes del libro, se consigna en nota y con su adverbio de duda.

«The allegations have been formally denied by retired Vice-Admiral Thomas Wilson.» — el desmentido del propio protagonista del caso Wilson va en nota, y el cuerpo del libro no lo recoge.

«Former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Oke Shannon, former Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Noel Longuemare, former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and USAF Gen. Joe Ralston, and former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Dr. Paul Kaminsky, have all stated they have no knowledge of the ‘Core Secrets’ version of events.» — la lista de altos cargos que niegan conocer esa versión, consignada entera en la misma nota.

«Organized in 1929 as a nonprofit charitable Trust, the unique structure of the Institute places it beyond ordinary audits and makes it immune from FOIA requests and most oversight.» — el mecanismo jurídico concreto que le ponen a su idea de custodia: una estructura fuera del alcance de la ley de acceso a la información.

«Advanced scientific projects, secret or not, can be kept private for a very long time, beyond the scrutiny of most government reporting.» — la generalización que sostienen sobre el secreto privado, que es el reverso de su crítica a la promesa de divulgación.

«Note that the title is a bit strange, since Area 51 is far away in Nevada and did not even exist at the time when atomic experiments were going on at “Ground Zero” in the State of New Mexico.» — la objeción geográfica que le hacen a un libro de la bibliografía, y que es del tipo de error que el propio caso obliga a evitar.

«somebody was watching. From that side of reality came material forms we could perceive, decode, and partially understand, yet the phenomena were beyond human technology at the time, and they remain an enigma today.» — la formulación más fuerte del prólogo, y es de otro lado de la realidad de donde vinieron formas materiales que pudieron percibir y descifrar solo en parte.

«Who are these emissaries from elsewhere? Once we set aside the deceptive mythologies that have accumulated around the problem— silly tales of Martian bases and political delusions about Nazi bases at the South Pole, speculation about superior races and the obsession of complicated conspiracies by government insiders—we are left with plain evidence for an unknown intelligence.» — lo que dicen que queda una vez apartadas las mitologías del campo, y lo llaman inteligencia desconocida y no visitantes.

«Why should it come as a surprise that consciousness can take larger forms than our limited brains have imagined? And how can we start designing an appropriate research program capable of interacting with other manifestations of life in a fantastic universe we’ve only started to map?» — la pregunta con que abren la posibilidad de formas de consciencia mayores que el cerebro humano, y la convierten enseguida en pregunta de programa de investigación.

«Never mind that the well-worn “space alien” idea from last century Hollywood is only one of many hypotheses about UFOs, or that the same magazine’s other pages are full of insights and well-articulated theories every week, about potential forms of life and consciousness in the universe that could manifest in infinities of ways, all of which admissible under today’s official science.» — su objeción a la burla de una revista científica: las formas de vida y de consciencia que la ciencia oficial ya admite son muchas más que el alienígena de Hollywood.

«Was it a direct answer to our discovery of nuclear forces? The hopeful beginning of a dialogue? A message? Was it packaged in such a way that it would trigger the kind of reaction an external actor might need: a forced opening of our minds, the opportunity to set aside our arrogance and to listen to other forms of consciousness, so we could be clearly presented with the flimsy parameters of our survival?» — la serie de preguntas con que cierran la conclusión, y donde ponen la apertura forzada de la mente y la escucha de otras formas de consciencia como posible propósito del episodio; todo va en interrogativa.

«Maybe the scientists fear to open the envelope and read out the real message. Maybe they think it would be too much. Maybe they’re right.» — y el remate, en tres quizás, que le concede la razón al miedo de los científicos a leer el mensaje.

«They still work today inside of us, and they continue to impact human consciousness, through the worldwide media, hinting at cosmic truths.» — lo que dicen que esas imágenes siguen haciendo dentro de nosotros y a través de los medios; es la frase donde el libro se acerca más a un lenguaje de verdades cósmicas.

«TRINITY: The Best-Kept Secret by Jacques F. Vallée & Paola Leopizzi Harris Copyright ©2021 by StarworksUSA, LLC and Documatica Research, LLC» — portadilla y créditos; el pie declara además «Kindle Edition».

«Cover and interior design by Maryann Sperry» — crédito de diseño.

«This book is warmly dedicated to the witnesses for their determination and their sharp observations» — la dedicatoria nombra a Jose Padilla, Remigio (Reme) Baca y Sabrina Padilla.

«Forget everything you've heard about the Roswell crash: It's a very significant story, obviously, but it came two years later» — voz de Ron Brinkley en el diálogo reconstruido del Owl Bar & Café, octubre de 2017. Suena a tesis del libro y no lo es.

«Because the Army covered up everything very well and the two witnesses of this particular crash were too scared to speak up.» — misma voz, misma conversación: por qué, según Brinkley, nadie lo investigó.

«These haunting figures are frequently compared with an immense praying mantis or human-sized insect.» — bloque citado de Jeffrey Kripal, no de los autores.

«The modern abduction visions thus replicate in precise and eerie detail, the thought of Frederic Myers: the same perfect insectoid form (Myers' imaginal stage), the same telepathic powers (Myers coined the term)» — continuación del mismo bloque de Kripal, con la resonancia entre Myers y la literatura de abducción.

«They had big bulgy eyes…you didn't even notice the nose because the eyes were so big.» — turno de Reme Baca, testigo. Voz del testigo, no de los autores.

«Everybody calls them Greys, I guess, but I haven't seen a grey, so I wouldn't know.» — turno de Reme a Paola Harris: el testigo declina adoptar el vocabulario del campo.

«I saw these pictures in my head…» — turno de Reme en 2010 sobre las visiones posteriores; añade «I got pictures, but I didn't know what they meant by then, and I still don't know».

«They looked under stress. They moved fast, as if they were able to will themselves from one position to another in an instant.» — turno de testigo citado de la documentación previa de Harris.

«They were never told, You might want to leave. You might not want to sell that cattle,» — turno de Reme Baca sobre los rancheros y la radiación de Trinity.

«a few people were probably overexposed, but they couldn't prove it and we couldn't prove it. So we just assumed we got away with it.» — declaración de Louis Hemplemann, Los Álamos, 1945, no revelada hasta 1986.

«My conjecture is that it was a field repair of a broken or otherwise nonfunctioning original piece.» — voz de un ingeniero senior de la NASA consultado por los autores, citado en bloque.

«The universe contains no anomalies, and the appearance of an anomaly is warning that our understanding is inadequate.» — epígrafe de la conclusión, atribuido a Wilbert Smith, 1961. Elección de los autores, no doctrina suya.

«Perhaps a large part of the activity that's classified as UFO activity—abduction and the whole host of this type—may very well not be due to extraterrestrial activity at all.» — segundo epígrafe de la conclusión, de Edgar Mitchell, astronauta del Apolo 14.

«In fact, I would say that many more people have more evidence supporting the reality of the flying saucers than for the reality of atom bombs.» — voz de Wilbert Smith en 1958, citado extensamente en la conclusión.

«Not the Air Force. Much higher than that.» — respuesta de Smith en el diálogo que la obra reproduce sobre a quién devolvió una pieza.

«but in the process everybody had missed the most significant case. It had quietly taken place here, precisely one month after the first nuclear explosion in history, as if in direct response to it. Nobody spoke about it for many years. It happened just a few miles from this diner. That’s where we’ve got to start» — voz de Ron Brinkley en el diálogo reconstruido del Owl Bar & Café: es él, no los autores, quien enuncia la prioridad del caso de 1945.

«Back in 1945, the scientists of Project Manhattan lived around here, in San Antonio, at the critical time for the assembly of the Bomb» — misma voz y misma conversación: Brinkley sitúa a los científicos del Proyecto Manhattan viviendo en San Antonio.

«If you were an American scientist yanked out of your university campus by the Army, or a Nobel prize-winning atomic physicist from Europe working hard to defeat Hitler, this was the only half-decent place for a meal» — cierre de ese turno de Brinkley sobre por qué el Owl Bar reunía a los físicos.

«This place is legendary. It changed the world.» — con esto cierra Brinkley su presentación del sitio, todavía dentro del diálogo reconstruido.

«The first test took place on July 16, 1945. It was a plutonium bomb, hanging from a tower at the place that became known, for future history books, as Ground Zero.» — turno de Brinkley: la cronología de las cuatro semanas la enuncia él, no los autores.

«Three weeks later, on August 5th, (August 6th in Japan), “Little Boy,” a novel but relatively simple uranium bomb, reduced Hiroshima and its inhabitants to fine radioactive dust.» — sigue el turno de Brinkley; el capítulo uno, ya en voz de los autores, fecha Nagasaki un día después que él.

«And just three days later, on August 8th, a plutonium bomb they called “Fat Man” in homage to Winston Churchill pulverized the giant military naval complex and the city of Nagasaki.» — misma voz, y aquí la atribución del nombre de la bomba a Churchill, que el libro no vuelve a sostener.

«The funny thing is, nobody has done any serious research about it. With a few exceptions, the folks who call themselves `ufologists’ have remained fixated on Roswell.» — turno de Brinkley con el reproche a la ufología por su fijación en Roswell; la queja es suya antes que de los autores.

«The scientific community was kept in the dark, as usual. There were good reasons for that.» — cierre del turno de Brinkley: dice que la comunidad científica quedó al margen y no explica cuáles eran esas buenas razones.

«“Early in July (1945),” writes Laura in her intensely-personal memoir Atoms in the Family (8), “men had started to disappear from the mesa and the word Trinity had floated with insistence in the air.”» — cita de las memorias de Laura Fermi, no voz de los autores; es la que trae la atmósfera previa a la prueba.

«They saw multi-colored orbs there, “not just lightning," Danny Many Horses told me: “The lights meant that Ussen, the Giver-of-Life, the Omnipotent God, was watching over them. He told them that hideous creatures would come down from the clouds if the tribes didn’t live in harmony. There were spirits in the moon, in the stars: The Apaches could hear their grumbling, high above the mountains.”» — voz de Danny Many Horses, artista y depositario de la tradición mescalera apache, en entrevista con Vallée: orbes multicolores, Ussen y criaturas que bajarían de las nubes si las tribus no viven en armonía. Es el único marco tradicional que el libro deja hablar, y los autores no lo aplican al caso.

«described by researcher Ryan Wood in his 2005 book Majic Eyes Only as “a traditional adobe house with a well in the front yard and a nice shiny pickup truck that (nine-year-old son) Jose was allowed to drive, since he was the only (young) male in the family not serving in the armed forces at the time.”» — cita de Ryan Wood, Majic Eyes Only, con la que abren el capítulo dos; la descripción de la casa Padilla es suya.

«the Mogollon, who lived in the high lands of New Mexico and Arizona; the Hohokam, farmers of the southern deserts, and the pueblo-dwelling Anasazi of the high mesas to the north," noted Reme in a memoir entitled Born on the Edge of Ground Zero» — cita de las memorias de Reme Baca, que el libro usa como fuente histórica además de como testimonio.

«Inez Padilla, Jose’s mother, had just seen her husband Faustino off to work,” recalls Reme Baca, “and Jose Padilla was drinking a cup of hot chocolate when the flash of the plutonium bomb, the sustained deadly sound and the heat wave came rolling over the landscape. Surprised, his mother peeked through a crack in the door at the flash of light. As a result, Inez sustained permanent loss of sight in that eye.”» — recuerdo de Reme Baca sobre la mañana de la prueba, con la ceguera de Inez Padilla; es testimonio referido, no dato verificado por los autores.

«Reme (correcting her): The path that the craft left. It doesn’t go just straight. It goes, and then it makes a right turn, like an “L”.» — turno de Reme Baca corrigiendo a la entrevistadora, que había dicho niveladora donde él dice nave; el libro conserva la corrección.

«So I was looking through the binoculars at these little creatures moving back and forth. Paola: Were they moving really fast? Reme: They were like, sliding. Paola: They were sliding… Reme: Not sliding, but more like willing themselves from one place to another. That type of sliding.» — turno de Reme sobre el modo de moverse de las criaturas; la fórmula de moverse por voluntad es suya, no de los autores.

«I’m seeing them and I’m feeling this crazy stuff, like I really feel sorry for them.» — turno de Reme sobre lo que sintió al verlos, reportado sin adjetivar por los autores.

«Surprised, she asks him to repeat that statement, and he confirms there were pictures, adding: “I didn’t know what the heck they were. I can remember what they are, I got pictures, but I didn’t know what they meant then, and I still don’t know. They must have known we were there.» — turno de Reme sobre las imágenes en la cabeza, con su declaración de no saber qué significaban ni entonces ni ahora.

«Well, the first thing we got to do is we got to get you home. We’ll look into this in the next day or so. It probably belongs to the government, and that’s probably it. We need to, maybe, stay away from there.» — palabras de Faustino Padilla dentro del recuerdo de Reme: la primera instrucción de silencio del caso viene de la familia, no del Ejército.

«Faustino emphasized it might endanger his job, since my dad worked for the government.» — turno de Reme con el motivo del silencio familiar, que es un empleo federal y no una amenaza militar.

«They had a change of attitude, a complete change of attitude. They were almost like different people.» — turno de Reme Baca sobre los adultos que entraron a la nave; es su percepción, y el libro no la interpreta aquí.

«We saw something like a broom (mark), or rake mark, but then again, it could be some animal, insect or snake that made those marks.» — turno de Reme sobre las huellas del terreno, con su propia duda incluida.

«I’m with the US Army and what I need to do is get permission from you to go in and cut the fence and put in a gate, because we have one of our experimental weather balloons that inadvertently fell on your property.» — palabras que Reme Baca le atribuye al sargento Avila; la explicación del globo meteorológico entra al libro como turno de un testigo, no como documento.

«Keep an eye on the place and make sure nobody goes there because you know, this is really important, you know, we don’t let anybody know about it.» — segunda parte del mismo recuerdo: la instrucción de silencio, tal como Reme la reproduce.

«Yes, a one way fastener. They go in one way and they can’t come out.» — turno de Reme sobre los remaches de la nave; el detalle técnico viene del testigo, no de un examen de los autores.

«It seems like they did. Like they willed themselves from one place to another.» — turno de Reme insistiendo en la fórmula de moverse por voluntad, la misma que usó al hablar de lo que vio por los binoculares.

«Normally, I would feel sorry for friends, relatives if something happened to them. But I didn’t know these creatures. We were curious. They were strangers, we didn’t know who they were, but we knew they were different.» — turno de Reme sobre lo que sintió ante las criaturas, en su propio vocabulario y sin categoría del campo.

«We don’t know what the heck they are, who they are, and what they are doing there. I don’t feel good about it.» — turno de Reme; la ignorancia declarada del testigo sobre lo que vio se mantiene hasta el final del capítulo.

«Something kept us there.» — turno de Reme sobre por qué se quedaron; la entrevistadora le propone enseguida una explicación racional y él la acepta.

«Jose kept it for probably a couple of days, and then, after that, he brought it to me and I hid it under the floorboards at the storage place across the street.» — turno de Reme Baca con el primer eslabón de la cadena de custodia; todo lo que el libro sabe de esos años sale de este relato.

«We were the only ones that knew its name. Translated, it means “Treasure”.» — turno de Reme sobre el nombre que los dos niños le pusieron al objeto.

«I got my rifle and I’m going to shoot them because they have no business in my house.» — palabras que Reme le atribuye a Pedro durante el registro militar de la casa; es recuerdo de testigo, no documento.

«That particular piece has a little carbon type of hairs in it and so if you notice that piece, even though it has a few melts around there, it transfers that heat from one side to the other.» — turno de Reme describiendo la pieza; la propiedad térmica entra al libro como observación suya.

«Well, when we first started down the road to that crash site, this piece was under a rock and I saw it glitter and it was moving up and down, and so I pulled it out from under the rock and kind of rolled it up and folded it up and you would fold it and it would go back into the same position as it was.» — turno de Reme sobre la lámina que recuperaba su forma; es el rasgo más citado del caso y viene del testigo.

«I believe they call that EMT heat. And that’s a very high, intense heat that melts, that has to be really hot to melt that.» — turno de Virginia Baca, esposa del testigo, aportando un término técnico que el libro no corrige ni respalda.

«I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the real story, because he wasn’t supposed to know…» — turno de Reme sobre lo que le calló a su propio padre.

«STALLION GATE No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred (...) The whole country was lighted by a searing light many times that of the midday sun. Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, 1945» — epígrafe de la segunda parte, atribuido al general Thomas Farrell y referido a la prueba nuclear, no al choque; la elección es de los autores.

«They asked my father for permission to cut the fence and build a road, “to take out their weather balloon.”» — turno de Jose Padilla; la versión oficial del globo llega al libro citada por el testigo.

«We were told not to go back, but the crash was on our land, so we went back anyway.» — turno de Jose Padilla sobre la desobediencia a la orden militar.

«but there was an intact panel attached to the inside curved wall, with a metal device that swivelled;» — descripción del interior de la nave en el relato del testigo, de donde sale la pieza que el libro analiza después.

«If this were true, it would have been as big as Roswell!» — palabras de Paola Harris citadas por el libro, con el condicional intacto.

«But it wasn’t important at the time, so I didn’t really have any reason to follow up on it.”» — palabras que el libro le atribuye a Stanton Friedman sobre por qué no siguió el caso.

«Roy Glauber, interviewed in 2013, recalled seeing him briefly after the Hearing: “His hair had been turning grey, what there was of it, and he looked worn and exhausted.”» — cita del físico Roy Glauber sobre Oppenheimer después de la audiencia, no voz de los autores.

«You know, I’ve heard this so many times, from so many people. Lonnie Zamora’s wife is Jose Padilla’s cousin, that’s an amazing coincidence.» — turno de Paola Harris sobre el parentesco entre la esposa de Lonnie Zamora y Jose Padilla; la conexión con el caso Socorro entra por ahí.

«We also know, and a lot of people probably still do, but after our crash there, after that crash… in 1945, there appeared to be a lot of sightings…they called them ghosts.» — turno de Reme Baca: el vocabulario con que la comunidad nombró los avistamientos posteriores fue el de fantasmas, no el del campo ufológico.

«No, they weren’t “Men in Black,” just out of place.» — turno de Reme rechazando la categoría que la entrevistadora le ofrece; el testigo declina otra vez el vocabulario del campo.

«I don’t believe there was a formal alien craft recovery-training course! We were at war.» — turno de Reme contra la idea de un protocolo previo de recuperación; el argumento de improvisación lo enuncia el testigo antes que los autores.

«The piece was taken care of. Reme kept that. It was his tesoro.» — turno de Jose Padilla sobre la custodia de la pieza, con la palabra en español tal como la imprime el libro.

«I don’t know whether they were looking directly, I know they were running back and forth, squealing…» — turno de Jose Padilla sobre las criaturas; su descripción difiere de la de Reme y el libro conserva las dos.

«Have you had any weird experiences, after your sighting? Any weird dreams, anything that you think is related to your sighting the craft and being so close to it? In your dreams, what is the space-oriented stuff, other than the fact that you saw a kind of catastrophe from a skyscraper, you saw people falling, and all that kind of thing….» — turno de Paola Harris; la pregunta ya trae dentro el catálogo de respuestas —sueños, cosas espaciales, la catástrofe desde un rascacielos— y conviene leer lo que sigue con eso a la vista.

«Well, some of it was where I was on the ship, (note: in the dreams) and there were others in the same ship, but further down.» — turno de Reme Baca sobre sus sueños posteriores, con la acotación editorial del libro dentro del propio turno.

«I wasn’t daydreaming it. I was in bed. There were some freaky things that I saw. After a while, it’s a drag, because you don’t really feel good about it.» — turno de Reme deslindando el sueño de la ensoñación y cerrando sin interpretar lo que vio.

«The problem with UFOs is that somebody is creating Reality for us, and we don’t know who it is…Could there be a consciousness that is shifting the mean point of the human system, altering our statistics in subtle ways? All it would take is to create an experience that changes a few individuals. Professor Robert Jahn Dean, School of Engineering Princeton University» — epígrafe de la tercera parte, atribuido a Robert Jahn, de la Escuela de Ingeniería de Princeton: una consciencia que correría el punto medio del sistema humano. Es la formulación más cercana a un marco de consciencia que el libro pone en página, y va como cita, no como tesis propia.

«my opinion is that…that “lightning” grounded that object, whatever it was.» — turno de Jose Padilla con su hipótesis sobre la causa del choque; el libro la recoge como opinión del testigo.

«Pieces of …, like, crashed metal, … aluminum: when it breaks, it doesn’t break in parts, it disintegrates.» — turno de Jose Padilla describiendo el material desprendido.

«It was clean, as if someone had been there, and it had cleaned everything up, except for that piece that you got (Note: the artifact shown on figure 20), and the paneling...» — turno de Jose Padilla sobre el interior de la nave, con la acotación editorial del libro remitiendo a una figura.

«Ah, this thing was about 20 inch or 30 inches wide, and an oval shape, and you could see through it.» — turno de Jose sobre el domo transparente, que en su turno anterior compara con un plástico.

«It was like a whole panel, you know, when it hit the tower, it popped out.» — turno de Jose sobre cómo se abrió el casco; de ahí sale la reconstrucción del impacto contra la torre.

«The eyes were kind of a teardrop, long ways.» — turno de Jose Padilla describiendo a las criaturas; el libro reproduce la descripción sin traducirla a ninguna categoría del campo.

«It seemed to me either that was a uniform they were wearing, or that was the shape of their body and their eyes.» — turno de Jose dejando abierta la alternativa entre traje y cuerpo, sin resolverla.

«To me, they seemed like they were injured, and they were making, oh, I would say, like a rabbit that was injured; or a newborn baby that was crying.» — turno de Jose sobre los sonidos, con las mismas dos comparaciones que usó Reme por separado.

«Ah, NO! Nobody was watching us; or knew we were watching them.» — turno de Jose que contradice de plano lo que Reme dijo sobre haber sido advertidos; el libro deja las dos versiones sin conciliar.

«descending fallout debris, described as sand-like dust, ‘like snow’ or ‘like flour’ covered the desert landscape.» — recuerdo de Reme Baca sobre la lluvia radiactiva, citado por los autores dentro del capítulo sobre el daño nuclear.

«I don’t want to interpret your dream or anything, but the clouds, when I think of clouds in your area, I think of mushroom clouds or atomic experiments which happened in Nevada after that.» — turno de Paola Harris que declara no interpretar y a renglón seguido ofrece la interpretación nuclear del sueño del testigo.

«In addition to local tests conducted in Washington State, we began working with Dr. Smith, of the Metallurgy department at an international facility, where three different electron scanning microscopes were used to look at the metals and analyze their elemental makeup.» — palabras de Reme Baca sobre los análisis que él mismo gestionó; el doctor Smith no aparece identificado y los autores lo señalan después.

«A blend of carbon and some other trace materials (?) is used, which dramatically increases the conducting power, eliminating the resistance to electricity while at the same time a transference of heat takes place.» — declaración sobre las propiedades del metal recogida del mismo testimonio, con el signo de interrogación del propio libro dentro de la cita.

«The creatures were like us – children, not dangerous. I could see little creatures walking around, moving around, they either had grey-white coveralls, or they had overalls on and had a hood or maybe no hair, it was hard to distinguish. If they were wearing coveralls, they were skin-tight.”» — testimonio de Reme Baca sobre el aspecto de las criaturas, con sus propias dudas sobre si era ropa o piel.

«At that point, from the point of view of a military officer, based on the testimony of two excited little kids, perhaps it was indeed “just one of our experimental weather balloons.”» — los autores reconstruyen aquí lo que un oficial habría pensado, y ponen la frase del globo entre comillas suyas: es conjetura, no documento.

«Reme’s testimony includes a mention of “distinctly non-human life forms which were alive and moving about upon our arrival minutes after the crash.”» — la fórmula del testigo para nombrar a las criaturas, citada tal cual por los autores.

«I wanted no part of whoever, whatever was inside.”» — turno de Reme sobre su negativa a entrar a la nave, en su propia formulación.

«the Feuerball was a flat, circular flying machine, powered by a special turbojet engine, which was used by the Germans during the closing stages of the war both as an anti-radar device and as a “psychological” weapon against human pilots.”» — cita de W. A. Harbinson citando a Renato Vesco, dentro del repaso de la hipótesis alemana; ni una ni otra son voz de los autores.

«The tower was taken out of there in 1956, but the map is from 1982.» — turno de la conversación sobre el mapa del BLM que sitúa una torre demolida veintiséis años antes.

«The direction the craft came from, was from San Antonio, like, coming from that Trinity Site, and then it made a turn and when it hit the tower, that turned it backwards and it landed right where it crashed.» — turno de Jose Padilla con la trayectoria; el origen en el sitio Trinity lo pone el testigo, no los autores.

«It was my feeling, that it came from Trinity.» — turno de Jose marcando él mismo que se trata de una impresión suya.

«I don’t know whether that was a door, an emergency door, or what.» — turno de Jose sobre la pieza desprendida, con la ignorancia declarada que el libro no rellena.

«I will call it angel’s hair, whatever it was, that was on the ground there.» — turno de Jose Padilla adoptando el término del folclore ufológico con su propia reserva: es él quien lo llama así, no los autores.

«I have a feeling that that “angel hair” came out of that (panel), like insulation.» — turno de Jose proponiendo una explicación prosaica del mismo material, como aislante desprendido del panel.

«It was white, uh, clear white, like a web, but, in a lot of little pieces, you know, that you could blow, like insulation.» — turno de Jose describiendo el material; es la única descripción de primera mano que el libro tiene de él.

«One thing that, um, that we tried, was to burn it and it wouldn’t burn.» — turno de Jose sobre la prueba casera que le hicieron al material; la propiedad entra al libro como recuerdo de infancia.

«Just for the Christmas Season, we used that and it was weird, like, cotton that we used before, we could burn it.» — turno de Jose: la familia usó el material como adorno navideño, que es el destino que tuvo antes de que nadie lo analizara.

«My Dad named the place “Pico de Italiano.” That means Italian Peak, which is on the map there. And I don’t know whether the military or whatever built that tower; the purpose of that, according to him, is that the aircraft that used to fly from the south, from El Paso, flying north, wouldn’t hit that hill where the tower was mounted on.» — turno de Jose Padilla con el topónimo local y la función que su padre le atribuía a la torre; la grafía se consigna tal cual.

«I am still of two minds as to whether or not this knowledge should be released into the world today. Once the step is taken there can be no return, and we have before us the horrible example of Atomic Energy. Wilbert Smith Head of the Canadian UFO investigation project, 1961» — epígrafe de la cuarta parte, atribuido a Wilbert Smith en 1961: la duda sobre si el conocimiento debe divulgarse, con la energía atómica como advertencia. La elección del epígrafe es de los autores.

«Officer Zamora said he saw two small human-like figures outside the craft, but he subsequently has refused any further comment on that detail.”» — cita del expediente sobre Zamora, con su negativa posterior a hablar de las figuras.

«And the lieutenant told me in a voice set somewhere between mystified and rasping, he didn’t think I was going to believe it, but he had a call from an FBI agent that they had an unidentified flying object report, and he thought it belonged to the military.» — testimonio del capitán Holder sobre la llamada que recibió, citado en bloque; es voz de un tercero.

«We began to carefully take measurements, and collect samples of the debris and measure, let’s say, what could possibly be called vehicular footprints in that area.» — continuación del mismo testimonio militar, con la cautela del propio testigo al nombrar las huellas.

«I sincerely hope that at long last... I may help transform Blue Book into what the public and the scientific world have been told it is...an investigative organization dedicated to the defense of the country but doing a good scientific job also...It is time that Blue Book no longer be called, as some wag has done, the Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated.”» — carta de J. Allen Hynek al coronel Raymond S. Sleeper, del 7 de octubre de 1968, citada en bloque; el mote es de Hynek, no de los autores.

«I don’t know what in the world it was, but Lonnie had told me that, after the thing started up, it had no sound.» — testimonio de un tercero sobre lo que le dijo Zamora; el dato del silencio llega así al libro.

«I had a roll of, ah, thirty-five millimeter slide film in my, ah, camera that I had taken pictures at the site, this aircraft landing, I had taken most of them. I usually carry a thirty-six exposure roll in there. And I’d taken most of them at the site that day; there was a lot to photograph; and I took lots of pictures.” “And then the—the Air Force ended up with them. And I don’t recall, right now, whether, ah, they were given to Captain Holder or one of the Air Force officers.» — testimonio del policía Ted Jordan sobre las fotos que tomó y que terminaron en manos de la Fuerza Aérea; el libro conserva las vacilaciones del habla.

«This random-looking placement of the landing pads would result in equal distribution of the weight of whatever those pads were supporting.”» — conclusión del ingeniero Bill Powers sobre las huellas, citada en bloque; el análisis es suyo.

«an excellent, highly malleable, and corrosive resistant coating for a spacecraft landing gear.”» — palabras del doctor Frankel sobre la aleación, que el libro cita antes de contar que las retiró.

«At a distance of about 30 meters, I saw a strange machine the shape of which vaguely recalled a rugby ball. Its size was approximately that of a (Renault) Dauphine car, and it was of a dull color. It was standing on four sort of metallic legs and a central support.» — testimonio de Maurice Masse citado en bloque; la comparación con un balón de rugby es suya.

«Surface cells receive the brunt of the field, resulting in spastic paralysis and sensory changes involving touch and feeling, and sight. One can only speculate on the mechanics of the field proper on the nerve cells.» — hipótesis del médico Bernard E. Finch sobre el mecanismo del efecto, citada en bloque; los autores no la suscriben ni la refutan.

«If there was, God would have let us know through his teachings, after all.» — palabras de Virginia Baca sobre por qué no creía a su marido; es el único argumento religioso que el libro pone en página, y es de una testigo.

«There was no noise at all, no sound. The craft just seemed to sit there as if it had been painted into the sky.» — relato de un avistamiento posterior de Reme Baca en el estado de Washington, en su propia formulación.

«Paola: This is one of the most important events I’ve ever investigated. I’ve shared this case with many researchers, and none of them took it seriously because they didn’t understand the technical aspects, and the gravity of this particular case.» — turno rotulado de Paola Leopizzi Harris en el diálogo de los dos coautores; el libro marca aquí quién habla, y esto es posición suya, no de la obra en bloque.

«Paola: Children don’t lie, certainly not in this way, about such an event. Every psychologist will tell you that.» — turno de Paola Harris con el argumento de credibilidad infantil; Vallée responde en el turno siguiente invocando a su difunta esposa, psicóloga infantil.

«Jacques: The field has fractured into many little discordant voices, from hoaxes to grand Theories with no relevance to actual cases…That’s what the public sees. The fake stories on cable channels are just as entertaining as the real ones, sometimes more. People react with their emotions, not their brains. And scientists are the worst!» — turno rotulado de Jacques Vallée sobre el estado del campo, con el remate contra los científicos.

«Paola: My whole life work has been to capture the exact words of witnesses, but that hasn’t led me to any conclusion about the mystery. Instead, my focus has been on historical accuracy, even if individual perceptions were distorted. But this case is unique: It moved me into another realm, to try to understand the meaning of reality, the reason for the manifestation, and the impact it had on the lives of Jose, Reme and Sabrina. They are our witnesses, our experts, our explorers.» — turno de Paola Harris sobre su propio método y su límite: la exactitud histórica no le ha dado ninguna conclusión sobre el misterio.

«Paola: I’m not so sure. I’ve never really examined what it could all mean. Maybe I should trust in my own ability to make some sense of the whole mystery, based on what they tell us. But it’s true this case has created a new perspective for us both because it involves children, it also involves Native American history, it involves the government, it involves scientists engaged in deadly top secret projects, and it involves a time where humanity shifted into a dangerous era.» — turno de Paola Harris enumerando las capas del caso: niños, historia indígena, gobierno, científicos y la entrada a la era atómica.

«Jacques: Perhaps, but it’s more complex than chess, because of all the levels of secrecy. It’s obvious the Intelligence systems are confused by all the fault lines in their own abstruse classification systems. The UFO problem has made that clear. Reme Baca knew more about this crash than the director of Central Intelligence, swimming in ambiguous signals of his own design.» — turno de Jacques Vallée: el secreto como confusión de los propios sistemas de clasificación, y no como custodia eficaz.

«Yes, New Mexico has its own mystique. In my travels, I’ve gone to White Sands Missile Range where Colonel Philip Corso had worked in 1957. I even went to the infamous Holloman Air Force Base. But every time I come to Trinity, Stallion Site, the site of the atomic bomb blast, as we did, I have the same intense emotion viewing the Oppenheimer statement from the Bhagavad Gita on that roadside marker: “I am the Killer of Worlds.” Notice the plural! Not just this particular world…All the» — turno de Paola Harris con la cita del Bhagavad Gita del monumento de Trinity, en la forma que ella lee ahí y con su acotación sobre el plural; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«Jacques: Let’s make sure it doesn’t turn into a circus, as Roswell did, with all the hoaxes, all the exploitation by every group, including the blatant lies by the military. It has been so hard for the real witnesses to have their story heard! This case, with the testimony of Jose and Reme… this case is unique. You’re the one who’s responsible for revealing it, and documenting it.» — turno de Jacques Vallée que le adjudica a la coautora la responsabilidad de haber revelado el caso.

«Paola: All I know is that it will stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s probably the most important investigation I’ve ever done, perhaps the best contribution we can make. The irony is that I’m passionate about giving a voice to the witnesses, telling the story of José, Reme and Sabrina. What happened on August 18, 1945 should be remembered. But it could start the same complex reactions as Roswell did.» — último turno del libro para Paola Harris, y ahí fecha el suceso el 18 de agosto de 1945, dos días después de la fecha que el resto del libro sostiene.

«I think I was about eight years old, seven to eight years old, (note: in 1960 or 1961) when I walked up there by myself.» — turno de Sabrina Padilla fechando su propio recuerdo, con la acotación editorial del libro dentro del turno.

«Well, I seen the metal pieces that… when my Grandfather (Faustino) had these strange little pieces or strips of metal at one time.» — turno de Sabrina Padilla, nieta de Faustino y tercera testigo del libro; su relato es de los años cincuenta, no de 1945.

«It was like a bunch of little razors touching you, I mean cutting you, but at the same time you wouldn’t be bleeding from it.» — turno de Sabrina describiendo el contacto con las fibras, en su propio vocabulario.

«It was always dark in that bedroom, and it would glow in there, I remember that, ‘cause, you know, we barely had electricity back then.» — turno de Sabrina sobre el brillo de las fibras en la oscuridad, con la condición doméstica que lo hacía visible.

«But I remember my Grandfather at one time--I was standing by him while these people were talking to him--he didn’t speak a lot of English, anyway, they looked like they were Police» — turno de Sabrina Padilla sobre la visita de unos desconocidos a su abuelo, con su propia reserva sobre quiénes eran; la frase sigue al pie de la plana siguiente.

«I don’t know, it was like they were telling him not to uh, speak to nobody, you know, like we did something wrong.» — turno de Sabrina sobre lo que entendió de esa escena siendo niña.

«It was a piece that broke off and it was in a shape, like I would say a shape of a pyramid, but it was broke.» — turno de Sabrina describiendo la pieza piramidal, uno de los tres artefactos que el libro persigue y nunca tiene en la mano.

«That’s not good for kids to be handling, because I was a kid and handling that.» — turno de Sabrina sobre el riesgo del material, dicho en retrospectiva.

«But uh, I remember when it was real hot, you could put that piece of metal onto your face and it would be cold.» — turno de Sabrina Padilla sobre el metal frío bajo el sol; es el rasgo que después consultan con un ingeniero.

«In his introduction to the American edition, Theodore Sturgeon describes it as “a brief visit from extraterrestrials,” who leave behind them something like litter after a roadside picnic.» — cita de Theodore Sturgeon presentando la novela de los Strugatski; la imagen del día de campo es suya y el libro se la apropia como título de capítulo.

«I just knew that they had buried something under there, ‘cause I seen the dirt where they had been, you know, digged up all that dirt and put it back, you know it was right near an old barrel we used to keep tar.» — turno de Sabrina Padilla sobre algo enterrado en el terreno, con la referencia doméstica que le sirve de mojón.

«And yet your Grandfather knew that was no weather balloon. He knew that!» — turno de Paola Harris afirmándole a la testigo lo que su abuelo sabía; la certeza es de la entrevistadora, no del testimonio.

«Faustino went back to investigate that, and found some things himself and brought it back with him.» — turno de Sabrina sobre su abuelo; el libro corrige después esta secuencia con lo que sabe por Jose.

«No, I know. I love your story, because your story is different from your Uncle Jose’s but it completes it.» — turno de Paola Harris valorando la divergencia entre dos testimonios como complemento; el criterio se enuncia dentro de la propia entrevista.

«Even though they were from the cemetery. And she said, “Tonight the Muertos are gonna come and get you for those rocks!”» — palabras de la abuela de Sabrina Padilla dentro del turno de la nieta; el único conjuro tradicional del libro, y sirve para que la niña devuelva unas piedras que brillaban.

«But Sabrina, rocks don’t glow in the dark, so what were they?» — turno de Paola Harris objetándole a la testigo su propio recuerdo; la entrevistadora marca aquí el límite de lo posible.

«He tried to put a blow torch to it and nothing happened with it.» — turno de Sabrina sobre la prueba casera del soplete; otra propiedad del material que llega al libro por vía doméstica.

«Mathematics must be the servant of understanding and not its master. Equations, by their very nature, cannot discover, they only yield relationships derived from the initial statements which were inherent in them when they were stated. Truth is not hidden, it is available to all and is the same for all.» — continuación del epígrafe de Wilbert Smith que abre la conclusión; la subordinación de la matemática al entendimiento es fórmula suya, no de los autores.

«I’ve thought about it often over the last thirty years. (...) I don’t think anybody else knows what it is. I’ve seen people that—if they can’t figure something out and give you a truthful answer—they will give you a snow job; and I think that’s what it was; I think the agencies involved, they didn’t know. They’re supposed to know everything.(...) And they want to protect the people from their own selves, I guess, by, ah, not divulging any information. But at the same time, they don’t have any information; they don’t know.» — testimonio del policía Ted Jordan sobre lo que a su juicio saben las agencias, que es nada; los autores lo suscriben en la plana siguiente.

«We were trained not to become a burden on anyone. We were taught not to complain about pain, and so we didn’t. However, our friends and family members began to get sick and die.» — palabras de Reme Baca sobre la generación expuesta a la prueba, citadas en el epílogo; es voz del testigo y no de los autores.

«There are no unanimous answers to moral problems,” Laura reflects in her book.» — cita de las memorias de Laura Fermi, con la que el libro cierra el asunto moral del proyecto.

«The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls.”» — carta de Edward Teller a Leo Szilard del 2 de julio de 1945, citada en el epílogo.

«Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is.» — frase de J. Allen Hynek citada en las notas; el libro la recoge, no la firma.

«Jacques F. Vallée Born in France in 1939, Jacques studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, earned a Master’s degree in astrophysics at the University of Lille and was recruited to the first French team that tracked early artificial satellites at Paris Observatory.» — nota biográfica del final del volumen, escrita en tercera persona; es paratexto editorial y no voz del cuerpo del libro.

«He was the real-life model for the character portrayed by François Truffaut in the film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.» — el mismo paratexto consigna la identificación con el personaje de Truffaut, dato de recepción y no de investigación.

«Born in Rome in a family of Italian diplomats, Paola Leopizzi Harris studied English and French at Rhode Island College and earned a second Bachelor’s degree in science at the University of Colorado.» — nota biográfica de la coautora en el mismo paratexto, con su formación declarada.

«As a widely-published writer with a strong audience in Europe, Paola began studying unidentified aerial phenomena and was soon on personal terms with leading researchers of the field, notably as an associate of Dr. J. Allen Hynek in his investigations.» — el paratexto le adjudica a Harris la asociación con Hynek, que es la credencial que el cuerpo del libro repite.

«Her current research focuses on events in Latin America and on related consciousness studies.» — el paratexto declara que la investigación actual de la coautora se ocupa de estudios de consciencia, línea que el cuerpo del libro no desarrolla.

Evidencia — Palabra que el libro interroga dos veces; mentir sobre algo no lo prueba, y una colección de artefactos no prueba nada por sí sola

Cadena de Custodia — Problema operativo explícito: reconstruir quién tuvo el objeto entre 1945 y la investigación

Hipotesis Extraterrestre — Se dice reforzada por las comparaciones con Socorro y Valensole, y en la misma frase el término se declara indefinido

Secreto Institucional — Custodia técnica compartimentada —«los Custodios»—, explícitamente sin cábala, gobierno secreto, Vaticano ni Illuminati

Disclosure — Promesa de mercado sin punto final medible, definida distinto por cada grupo, y gestionable solo por quien ya custodia el expediente

Magonia (la región de donde vienen las naves de las nubes) — Aparece una sola vez en el cuerpo, y para excluir el marco, no para aplicarlo

Testigo — El testigo no es un instrumento a descontar: la interacción entre fenómeno y observador se declara parte del suceso, y lo que un testigo calla o miente se ficha como dato del caso

Anomalia — Se reclama para Charles Fort la figura del servidor de la ciencia que pide estudiar lo desatendido, y se apoya en una frase atribuida a Bohr sobre que no hay ciencia sin anomalía

Crítica de fuentes (criterios de inclusión y descarte) — Regla de entrevista declarada: volver sobre el mismo relato desde otro ángulo en vez de completarlo por inferencia, y consignar las discrepancias entre testigos

Dimension Humana — Lo que dicen que le falta al estudio del fenómeno es antropología: fondo social, culturas del sitio, lenguas habladas y el significado variable de las palabras

Vocabulario del Campo — Argumento de anacronismo: en 1945 nadie usó los términos ni los memes del campo actual, y los testigos declinan adoptarlos incluso cuando la entrevistadora se los ofrece

Trascendencia — Única cosa que el libro pone en lugar de la hipótesis tecnológica: el fenómeno no estaría enseñando física sino a trascender la propia humanidad, o a perecer; queda enunciado y sin desarrollar

Fisico y Psiquico — Se cita del propio artículo de 2003 la hipótesis de que los fenómenos son físicos y psíquicos a la vez, y la exigencia de medir el impacto sobre el testigo y su entorno social

Angel Hair — Las fibras del sitio se nombran con el término del folclore ufológico, con el término técnico moderno y con la explicación doméstica del aislante, sin decidir entre los tres

Custodios — El secreto se describe como custodia técnica compartimentada y como estructura jurídica —un fideicomiso de 1929 fuera del alcance de la ley de acceso a la información—, no como cábala

Ingenieria Inversa — Hipótesis admitida a examen y desactivada en la misma frase, porque la propiedad en cuestión ya era alcanzable por la ingeniería de la época