William E. Smith Interview, 11 July 2001(a)

WS

That's where I was at Oscar.

JK

And it's been, of course, kind of difficult finding you because of the number of Smiths out there.

WS

(Laughing). I'll bet.

JK

But, you know, on your form you have William E. Smith, Jr. We were able to pare this down to a list of about 100. In fact, yours was the next-to-the-last one I called this morning.

WS

Wonderful. Well, I have been interested over the years, as a matter of fact, I have talked about that incident from time to time. I am a college teacher.

JK

Oh, I'll be darned.

WS

And from time to time I have discussed that incident with my students because it did have a major impact upon me at that point, and of course, it was always left open and the government decided that it's not going to say very much. But I know what I saw and I know the other guys that were there, the crew members, the ones on the ground and in the air, and I listened as we were connected with the capsule and the bomber and back at the base everybody was on the same line—and some amazing, startled people were saying "My gosh," and we're all seeing the same thing, you know, seeing this thing at the same time.

JK

Right.

WS

And again, I had my crew, ground crew, I went out with them. I had one guy who was driving who was a little bit shaky but I said, "No, we're going to go out." So I went out with him, and we were trying to look around the sites and where we had seen some of these things and where we had heard that they were coming down, and boy, it was just strange, because my guys were ready to shoot anything that moved, they were ready to shoot a cow.

JK

Right.

WS

And the guys out in the field out there, we were just out there searching. But I wanted to get closer to contact, just, you know, crazy, dumb, young idiot out there, but I knew what I saw and I knew it was something that was extra phenomenal—in my mind, anyway.

JK

Right.

WS

So I wanted to get closer. In your research, do you recall that one of the sites in Oscar had some radiation that was not explained? Was that part of the study that—

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