According to Wanda Sudrala, editor of the newsletter Euforia, "a friend of mine who is active Air Force and stationed in Montana... attended a meeting in Helena, Montana at which Jesse was the guest speaker," then wrote an article about Marcel that appeared in the May edition of Euforia. From there, the story was posted to the Internet, where it has apparently become somewhat embellished.
Marcel told of a closed-door meeting in Washington in 1991 with a man named Dick D'Amato, a national security specialist on the staff of Senator Robert Byrd. D'Amato is known to a number of UFO investigators as having taken a serious interest in claims of a government cover-up of UFOs.
In one version of the story now circulating in cyberspace, "D'Amato acknowledged to Jesse that there was a crash and aliens were aboard, the first time Jesse Jr. had ever heard anyone in the government acknowledge the crash." However, CNI News Editor Michael Lindemann called Dr. Marcel to inquire about this rumor and was told something different.
Dr. Marcel said he had indeed met with D'Amato in July of 1991. D'Amato wanted Marcel to describe everything that he had been shown of the alleged crash debris by his father in July, 1947. D'Amato also wanted to know how the Roswell events had affected Dr. Marcel personally.
At one point in the meeting, D'Amato motioned to a book on the table. It was Whitley Streiber's "Majestic," a supposedly fictional recreation of the Roswell events and their aftermath. "This is not fiction," D'Amato said, according to Marcel.
"I knew it was fiction," Marcel said, "so I wasn't sure what he was getting at." Lindemann asked Dr. Marcel if D'Amato made any direct reference to knowledge of alien bodies at Roswell. Marcel insisted that D'Amato "said nothing about bodies or alien crew or anything like that. I want to set the record straight on that."
D'Amato asked Marcel to contact him if he got any new information, or any threatening phone calls or other harrassment.
Further notes on this story are provided by James Easton [with thanks to Dan Drasin for forwarding]. Easton writes:
"[On 30 July], I was speaking with Graham Birdsall of Quest International and editor of UFO Magazine (UK) and I asked if he had ever heard of this claim. Like myself, it was news to him. As he was due to telephone Stanton Friedman the following day concerning the "Santilli affair," I suggested that Stanton may be interested to hear of this.
"The following evening, Graham confirmed he had mentioned this to Stanton and was somewhat taken aback to hear Stanton confirm that not only had he heard of this meeting, he was there! There was one other unnamed person also present.
"Stanton was very surprised that Dr. Marcel had released the name of Mr. D'Amato and said that D'Amato had indicated that he would not confirm this meeting had taken place.
"The following day, Graham told me that he had just been speaking to Timothy Good and had mentioned this meeting to him. Tim was also very surprised to hear of this.
"For the last few years, both in Washington and in London, Tim had met with Dick D'Amato in confidence.
"Tim was introduced to D'Amato by Whitley Strieber and confirmed that these events are relevant to Strieber's latest book, "Breakthrough." Again, Tim did not expect to hear D'Amato publicly identified and said that some of the content of his next book refers to these meetings and their implications, but that he had not identified D'Amato. As this information
was now in the public domain, he would consequently be doing so."
Original file name: .CNI - Marcel.D'Amato
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