AudioBlog (Part I & II) APRO, MUFON, and the Cash-Landrum Case

After Project Blue Book was shut down in 1969, private UFO groups were the only organizations left in the U.S. that would take UFO reports, and the two biggest were the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. Donald Keyhoe was ousted as NICAP’s director just three days before the December 17, 1969, press release announcing Blue Book’s termination, and NICAP quickly became a shadow of its former self while APRO, run by its founders Jim and Coral Lorenzen, remained a formidable and influential organization. That same year, a group of APRO investigators living in the Midwest organized by Walt Andrus as the Tri State Study Group, decided on May 31st to branch off from APRO and operate as the Midwest UFO Network. This was in reaction to the Lorenzens’ move towards a more centralized management strategy seeking to direct all field investigations from their office in Tucson, Arizona. The Lorenzens, particularly Coral, who had a reputation for being contentious (she frequently took out her ire in the pages of the APRO Bulletin, and her earliest targets as far back as 1952 were Albert K. Bender and James W. Moseley) took the Midwestern group’s decision personally and held a grudge for years to come. The Midwest UFO Network soon outgrew its Midwestern boundaries and the name was changed to the Mutual UFO Network in 1973. A rivalry developed between the two, and this resulted in clashes when they happened to converge on a given case, and a prime example of this is the 1981 Cash-Landrum case. Read more →

Part II
n last week’s blog, we began looking at documents that provide a behind the scenes look at the rivalry between the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and the Mutual UFO Network. APRO was founded in 1952 by Coral and Jim Lorenzen and MUFON was founded in 1969 by members who split off from APRO amidst bad feelings. Things came to a head during the investigation of the 1981 Cash-Landrum incident. As it was reported to have taken place in Huffman, Texas, APRO handed the case over to the director of the Houston-based Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team, John Schuessler, who was also the deputy director of MUFON. Coral wrote an article one and a half years after the reported incident that was published in the June 1982 Vol 30, No. 6 APRO Bulletin headlined “Rumors Permeate Cash-Landrum Case” wherein she claimed to know that what witnesses Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Colby Landrum saw was a “U.S. experimental aircraft.” She also insinuated that Schuessler, MUFON director Walt Andrus, and former Project Blue Book consultant and founding director of the Center for UFO Studies J. Allen Hynek were part of a cover-up as they all had ties to various government organizations. Schuessler responded with a five-page letter to Jim Lorenzen defending himself and pleaded that if APRO had real knowledge of what it was the witnesses saw, he should share it as all three witnesses, particularly Betty Cash, seemed to have suffered the effects of radiation poisoning. This week, we’ll begin with Coral’s response. Read more →

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