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Anthony Bragalia has long contended that Lonnie Zamora was
the victim of a college- induced hoax (in Socorro, 1964).
Mr. Bragalia has provided reams of circumstantial piffle to
bolster his thesis but neglects the one clue that could prove (or disprove) his
hypothesis: the Socorro Insignia:
Reading, in The London review of Books [2/6/2104, Page 25],
about a college prank of 1755 involving a pamphlet called Pope ein
Metaphysiker!, that involved an attempt by an anonymous writer or writers
(students?) “to make fun of the learned members of the Royal Prussian Academy”
accusing “them of dishonouring the memory of their found member, Gottfried
Leibniz,” brings to my mind what any real hoaxer or hoaxer of the Socorro incident
might do.
Reviewer Jonathan Rée, who presents the story, writes, “Pope
ein Metaphysiker! Was an impudent prank at the expense of the cultural
establishment in Berlin, and the perpetrators covered their tracks by
suppressing their names and getting the pamphlet printed in faraway Danzig. But
they seemed to have wanted to be found out in due course, and on the title page
they left a riddling clue to their identity: a vignette depicting a chubby
cherub holding a bearded mask to his face and startling two naked boys.
Intriguing, but what could it mean?” [Italics mine]
As Curtis D MacDougall points out in Hoaxes [Dover
Publications, NY, 1940/1958], there are many reasons to hoax, but it’s
psychiatry that addresses the need by some hoaxers to become known, after the
fact of heir hoaxing.
This is what, it seems, the “students” wanted to happen in
the Pope ein Metaphysiker! incident wanted.
And I think that might be the case in the Socorro incident,
if the episode was a prank or hoax.
But Mr Bragalia doesn’t pursue the Insignia. He pursues and
is still pursuing the driver of the car that Officer Zamora was chasing and the
co-conspirators of the prank. And he thinks he’s made some headway.
The Insignia or symbol, described by
Officer Zamora and made, maddeningly convoluted by the insistence of Ray
Stanford and others that the well-known drawing was a ruse and the real
insignia was this:
Mrs. Zamora confirmed, for me, in a 2006 telephone call,
that the commonly known insignia is what her husband saw and drew.
That’s the clue to whom created the incident or was the
creator(s) of the “egg-shaped craft’ that Officer Zamora saw.
If Mr. Bragalia could nail down the insignia, as originating
from or in the New Mexico Technical school, he might make his case.
But, as it stands, the connection to Howard Hughes and the
CIA as the originators of the craft and the insignia have more credence, which
has been addressed here and elsewhere by us and Matthew Gilleece:
RR
