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