Fort Dix–McGuire incident

Fort Dix–McGuire incident

Alleged date	Early hours of 18 January 1978
Place	Fort Dix (Army) and the adjoining McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey
Claim	A Fort Dix military policeman shot a small grey being, which died on a disused McGuire runway; a Wright-Patterson team flew the body out by C-141
Main witness	An Air Force security policeman, "Jeff Morse" (pseudonym)
Investigators	Leonard Stringfield, Richard Hall; later Fran Ridge; NIDS (2002)
Verdict	NIDS: a hoax; the supporting "incident form" probably counterfeit
Date	18 January 1978
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
People	Leonard Stringfield, Jeffrey Morse, Richard Hall, George Filer
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 83
Year	1978 in UFO history
Timeline	1978 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

The Fort Dix–McGuire incident is an alleged event of 18 January 1978. According to later accounts, a military policeman at Fort Dix in New Jersey shot a small grey being, which then died on a runway of the neighbouring McGuire Air Force Base.^[1][2][3] A document said to confirm the story surfaced in 1985 and is widely considered a hoax. A 2002 investigation by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) concluded the whole tale was a hoax.^[1][10] No official records support the case.^[1]

The story

The account comes from an Air Force security policeman, known in the literature as "Jeff Morse". The researcher Richard Hall says this was a pseudonym; the skeptic Philip Klass calls him "James Morse".^[2][3][10] In a letter summarising his experience, Morse wrote:^[2]

• The sightings. Between 3 and 5 a.m., while he was on routine patrol, there were UFO sightings over the airfield and Fort Dix. State police and Fort Dix MPs were "running code" toward Brownsville.
• The trooper. A New Jersey state trooper came to McGuire's gate 5 asking for access to the back of the airfield. He said a Fort Dix MP had been pursuing a low-flying, oval, blue-green glowing object, which hovered over his car and cut off his radio.
• The shooting. A creature appeared in front of the MP's car, "about 4 ft tall, grayish, brown, fat head, long arms, and slender body". The MP fired five rounds from his .45 into it and one at the object, which shot straight up and joined eleven others high in the sky.
• The body. The creature fled toward the McGuire fence line. Security police later found its body near the runway; it had apparently climbed the fence and died. The area was roped off, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations took over, and there was a "bad stench", like ammonia.
• Its removal. That day a team from Wright-Patterson arrived in a C-141 cargo plane, crated the body, sprayed something on it, sealed it in a metal container and flew off. Everyone was warned that talking would mean court-martial.

Morse later added that two days afterwards he and others were flown to Wright-Patterson for intimidating interrogation, signed forms "supposed to bind me for life", and were soon transferred to separate overseas bases. He went to Okinawa.^[2][3]

Investigation

How the story was investigated:^{[1][3][4][10]}

• First contact. According to Klass, Leonard Stringfield first heard from Morse in a letter received on 23 September 1980. Over the next three years Morse added the interrogation story and the names and ranks of his alleged interrogators.
• Hall's interview. Hall, a former deputy director of NICAP, met Morse in person on 13 January 1985 and found him credible. Hall said he met Morse several times and that Morse gave a formal deposition and named his interrogators, whose identities had been "verified".
• Publication. Hall's confidence prompted Stringfield, who had been ambivalent, to present the case at the 1985 MUFON Symposium. It appeared that summer as his Status Report IV, The Fatal Encounter at Ft. Dix–McGuire: A Case Study.
• Later work. The NICAP researcher Fran Ridge later reinvestigated the case, compiled the documents, and gave it a preliminary rating of 0.

Hall also wrote that Morse had been harassed to the point of difficulty finding law-enforcement work.^[3]

The document

Soon after his disclosures, Morse sent Stringfield a photocopy of what appeared to be an official Form 1569, "Incident/Complaint Report", naming the MP who fired the shots.^[10] In September 1985 the CAUS Washington Report, published by Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, hailed it as a "Breakthrough on the Dix-McGuire UFO Connection". The report credited "the conscience pangs of one of the principals involved".^[1] The document could not be verified. The researcher Barry Greenwood recalled that "this was the era when a lot of government document fakes were circulating. I have a folder full of them."^[1] Scans of the documents were once hosted by NICAP and survive only as archived images.^[7][8]

George Filer

A second witness emerged later. George Filer, a retired Air Force major who later became MUFON's Eastern Region director, said he was an intelligence officer at McGuire in 1978 whose duties included briefing the commanding general.^[3][10] His account:^[2][3]

• The runway. Arriving at 4 a.m., he saw a commotion with red lights on a disused runway.
• The command post. A senior master sergeant told him that UFOs had been seen by the tower and on radar over Fort Dix, and that an alien had been shot and found dead on the McGuire runway.
• Not first-hand. Hall noted that Filer was not on duty at the time and heard talk of the "alien body" the next morning.

Filer was a featured witness at Steven Greer's Disclosure Project press conference in May 2000.^[10] In 2019 he published a book supporting the story. That book was covered by the Asbury Park Press, whose article is behind a paywall.^[6] The Trentonian also revisited the local legend in 2007; only the headline of that piece survives online.^[9]

The NIDS investigation

In 2002, in response to requests, NIDS deputy director Colm Kelleher assigned the investigator Roger Pinson to the case. Klass reported the results in his Skeptics UFO Newsletter:^[10]

• No corroboration. Pinson spoke to dozens of people and found "no corroboration for the reality of the dead-ET incident".
• The form. The Form 1569 was so flawed that it was probably counterfeit.
• The interrogator. The former lieutenant colonel Morse named as an interrogator at Wright-Patterson had been based at McGuire and flatly denied ever having been to Wright-Patterson.
• The officers. Four senior officers stationed at McGuire at the time "responded without hesitation". They insisted they would have known of such an incident had it occurred.

NIDS anticipated that critics would say senior officers were bound to deny it. Klass added that if an alien had really been killed, both bases would have mobilised against reprisal, which did not happen.^[10]

Assessment

The case rests on one pseudonymous witness and a document judged probably counterfeit. Filer's account is second-hand.^[1][3][10] The only independent investigation, by NIDS, concluded it was a hoax.^[10] Discussion on the skeptical forum Metabunk has revisited the story without producing new evidence.^[3][5] The incident remains unproven.^[1]

People and topics

• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — The Ohio air base that housed Project Blue Book and is linked to the Hangar 18 legend.
• Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
• Jeffrey Morse — Air Force security policeman linked to the 1978 Fort Dix–McGuire story.
• Richard Hall — NICAP assistant director and author of Uninvited Guests.
• George Filer — Retired Air Force major who promoted the Fort Dix–McGuire story.
• NIDS — Robert Bigelow's research institute (1995–2004) that studied UFOs and other anomalies.

On the Timeline

• NASA physical evidence policy (1978) (17 January 1978) — A NASA memo describes a program to analyze physical UAP evidence.
• State Department "no records" reply (1978) (19 January 1978) — The State Department says it has no UAP records; a requester sends it one of its own documents.

See every 1978 event on the UAP Timeline →

References