A Fresh Look at the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident

The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident: Was this Honey Badger?

"There was no evidence presented that would indicate that Army, National Guard, or Army Reserve helicopters were involved." 

That was the conclusion of Lt. Col. George C. Sarran's report on his investigation for the Department of the Army's Inspector General’s office on the allegations of US military helicopters being present during the Cash-Landrum UFO encounter.   His investigation was carried out 18 months after that extraordinary encounter on a road near Houston, Texas, and it is quite possible that he was unaware the statement was not entirely true.  Despite what Sarran said, the truth about the presence of US military helicopters during the Cash-Landrum incident seems to have been covered up and denied at the highest level.   There is every reason to think that the helicopters that were seen at the time were indeed US military ones and they were engaged in a Top Secret exercise of the very highest priority. 

The story of what happened when Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and her grandson Colby encountered a supposed UFO on a night in December 1980 near Huffman, Texas, is well known but no satisfactory explanation has ever been found.   Let us first briefly recap that event as related by Wikipedia:-

On the evening of December 29, 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Colby Landrum (Vickie's seven-year-old grandson) were driving home to Dayton, Texas, in Cash's Oldsmobile Cutlass after dining out.

At about 9:00 p.m., while driving on an isolated two-lane road in dense woods, the witnesses said they observed a light above some trees. They initially thought the light was an airplane approaching Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH - about 35 miles away) and gave it little notice.

A few minutes later on the winding roads, the witnesses saw what they believed to be the same light as before, but it was now much closer and very bright. The light, they claimed, came from a huge diamond-shaped object, which hovered at about treetop level. The object's base was expelling flame and emitting significant heat.

Vickie Landrum told Cash to stop the car, fearing they would be burned if they approached any closer. However, Vickie's opinion of the object quickly changed: A born-again Christian she interpreted the object as a sign of the second coming of Jesus Christ telling her grandson, "That's Jesus.  He will not hurt us."

Anxious, Cash considered turning the car around, but abandoned this idea because the road was too narrow and she presumed the car would get stuck on the dirt shoulders, which were soft from that evening's rains.

Cash and Landrum got out of the car to examine the object.  Colby was terrified, however, and Vickie Landrum quickly returned to the car to comfort the frantic child. Cash remained outside the car, "mesmerized by the bizarre sight," as UFO researcher Jerome Clark subsequently wrote.    He went on,

The object, intensely bright and a dull metallic silver, was shaped like a huge upright diamond, about the size of the Dayton Water Tower with its top and bottom cut off so that they were flat rather than pointed. Small blue lights ringed the center, and periodically over the next few minutes flames shot out of the bottom, flaring outward, creating the effect of a large cone. Every time the fire dissipated, the UFO floated a few feet downwards toward the road. But when the flames blasted out again, the object rose about the same distance."

The witnesses said the heat was strong enough to make the car's metal body painful to the touch—Cash said she had to use her coat to protect her hand from being burnt when she finally re-entered the car. When she touched the car's dashboard, Vickie Landrum's hand pressed into the softened vinyl, leaving an imprint that was evident weeks later.  Investigators cited this handprint as proof of the witnesses' account; however, no photograph of the alleged handprint exists.

The object then moved to a point higher in the sky.  As it ascended over the treetops, the witnesses claimed that a group of helicopters approached the object and surrounded it in tight formation. Cash and Landrum counted 23 helicopters, and later identified some of them as tandem-rotor CH-47 Chinooks which are used by military forces worldwide.

With the road now clear, Cash drove on, claiming to see glimpses of the object and the helicopters receding into the distance.

From first sighting the object to its departure, the witnesses said the encounter lasted about 20 minutes.  Based on descriptions given in John F. Schuessler's book about the incident, it appears that the observers were southbound on Texas state highway FM 1485/2100 when they claimed to have seen the object. The initial location of the reported object, based on the same descriptions, was just south of Inland Road, approximately at 30.0926°N, 95.1109°W.

Investigators later located a Dayton police officer, Detective Lamar Walker, and his wife who claimed to have seen 12 Chinook-type helicopters near the same area the Cash-Landrum event allegedly occurred and at roughly the same time. These other witnesses did not report seeing a large diamond-shaped object.

Soon after their encounter with the mystery object Betty Cash and the Landrums once they had returned home all suffered from nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and generalized weakness as though they had suffered severe sunburns.  Betty Cash’s symptoms were particularly bad and worsened over the next few days.  She could not walk and lost large patches of skin and clumps of hair causing her to be hospitalized.  A radiologist was quoted as saying it appeared that all three patients must have been exposed to ionizing radiation (possibly from a nuclear source) and/or non-ionizing radiation such as microwaves or ultraviolet light.

Vickie Landrum telephoned a number of US government agencies and officials about the encounter.   When she phoned NASA, she was steered towards NASA aerospace engineer John F Schuessler who had long been interested in UFOs and became years later the International Director of MUFON.  Schuessler researched the case in great detail and later wrote articles and a book on the subject.  His undoubtedly sincere perspective of the incident was always that this must have been an extraterrestrial UFO or else testing by the US military of a recovered alien spacecraft such as the alleged Project Snowbird.

After contacting their US Senators Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum were advised to file a complaint with the Judge Advocate Claims office at Bergstrom AFB.  They were next advised to hire lawyers and seek compensation for their injuries.  Their attorney, Peter Gersten, who headed CAUS (Citizens Against UFO Secrecy), took the case pro bono and sued the US government for $20 million on their behalf.  On August 21, 1986, a District Court Judge dismissed their case noting that the plaintiffs had not proved the helicopters were associated with the US Government and that military officials had testified the United States Armed Forces did not have a large diamond-shaped aircraft in their possession.  

         

A Fresh Look at the Cash-Landrum Incident

There are very good reasons for thinking that the helicopters were real and were indeed ones belonging to the US military despite the conclusions of George Sarran’s inquiry.   The fact probably had to be covered up because this exercise required the very highest level of secrecy without which its whole purpose would have been lost.  Only the helicopter crews and the senior officers who ordered the exercise would have had the slightest idea about its purpose.

To make any sense of the episode one cannot afford to ignore the grave international political situation that had consumed the attention of the United States, the President, and various arms of the US military for all of the year 1980.  This was of course the Iran hostage crisis which blighted Jimmy Carter’s presidency and concentrated minds both in government and the military to find some way of rescuing the 52 Americans who were eventually held for 444 days.

Operation Eagle Claw used eight RH-53 helicopters and several C-130s in an attempt to rescue the hostages on April 24, 1980. It failed miserably with the loss of several aircraft and the lives of eight servicemen.  Subsequently the crisis deepened.  A second rescue attempt, Operation Credible Sport, was planned using highly modified YMC-130H Hercules aircraft, one of which crashed during a demonstration flight at Eglin AFB on October 29, 1980. This project was abandoned shortly afterwards and it was on November 2, 1980, the Iranian parliament set forth formal conditions for the US hostages’ release. At just this time Ronald Reagan was elected President, although obviously he would not take up office until eleven weeks later.

I believe that one cannot begin to understand the strange Cash-Landrum incident without first setting the scene.  New urgent plans for the US military to rescue the hostages in Iran were still being prepared as from October 1980 since few believed that the Iranians would keep their word on any agreements that had been reached.  These new plans resulted in the formation of the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), the ‘Task Force 160’, who were also known as the Night Stalkers.  They are referred to in John Alexander’s 2011 book UFOs –Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities and there it was said they had been exonerated in Sarran’s report.  Even so, the 160^th and US Navy SEALs are most likely to have been the occupants of the helicopters involved in the Cash-Landrum incident.  For an appreciation of the role of the 160^th SOAR see:-

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/160th_Special_Operations_Regiment_(Airborne)

There is known to have been a second projected rescue plan by the 160^th, known as Project Honey Badger,  to rescue the Iran hostages in early 1981.  This was finally called off when President Reagan came into office and the hostages were released on January 20, 1981. However, it is known that the Honey Badger exercises had continued until well after the November 4, 1980, US presidential election.  It was said that “Numerous special operations, applications, and techniques were developed which became part of the emerging USSOCOM repertoire" according to the Wikipedia entry on Operation Eagle Claw.   I suggest that it must have been Honey Badger which led to the extraordinary Cash-Landrum incident with near fatal results for Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and her grandson Colby.   

If that were the case, we need to explain what the diamond-shaped flaming object was that descended on the country road near Huffman, TX.  My suggestion is that it was some kind of “THW”.  That is my unofficial acronym for “Trojan Horse Weapon” and something of this kind was going to be needed for the hostage rescue mission to have any chance of success.

Illustration of a TV re-enactment of the Cash-Landrum Incident

Everyone is familiar with the story of the great wooden horse which the Greeks left outside the gates of Troy during the Trojan War (c. 1200 BC). The Trojans were very puzzled as to what this was but, thinking the Greek forces had sailed away, they took it inside the city anyway.  Inside the horse Greek soldiers were concealed and, in the dead of night, they climbed out and opened the city gates for their returning comrades to rush in.  This clever deception allowed the Greek army to destroy the city of Troy and bring the lengthy Trojan War to an end.

Any modern THW would have to be a totally unfamiliar object and one whose purpose was not obvious to the people it was intended to fool. Its objective would be to deceive, distract, and possibly even disable the enemy defenders at the position attacked. I don’t suggest that it was meant to look like a UFO but any such THW would have to descend from the sky at night, land close to where the rescue operation was going to take place, and distract –even injure-- the Iranians guarding the hostages.  If it worked, the hostages could be rescued from the large building where they were being held in Tehran.  Task Force 160 men would descend onto the roof of the building from helicopters and blast their way into where the hostages were being held.

It may have been planned as a similar sort of mission to Operation Neptune Spear which was sent to Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 to kill Osama bin Laden.  That was an easier proposition in that there were no hostages to be rescued and only a few armed defenders in the bin Laden compound.  Even so, it involved several helicopters and a staging point in the desert for refueling of the aircraft and a holding position for the back-up CH-47 Chinooks. 

If the Cash-Landrum “UFO” was indeed a THW we can only guess at the exact role it was meant to play.  One possibility is that it was an experimental nuclear lighting device powered by a small reactor which might have weighed 10 tons or more.  Output would have been used to produce an exceptionally intense light source (or sources) for, if need be, an hour or more.  If that could be made to work as planned, it could have been flown into Tehran slung under a Chinook helicopter, and fired up when it was landed near the Teymour Bakhtiari mansion in Tehran where the hostages were being held as from November 1980.  The device’s intensely brilliant light(s) would blind any Iranian guards or soldiers who tried to resist the rescue mission.  This would probably have been carried out by Navy SEALs wearing special goggles to shield their eyes from the intense beam.  

A number of Task Force 160 helicopters could have carried out such an operation and taken the rescued hostages to a waiting US Navy ship out at sea.  Such a THW –presumably unmanned—might have been intended to descend under its own power or else be lowered by cables from a Chinook helicopter high overhead.  During the Cash-Landrum incident the mystery object was said to be belching flames downward but whether that was from a descent rocket engine or simply part of its fearsome THW display is unclear.  It is most unlikely that any THW like this could fly the 400 miles between the Persian Gulf and Tehran under its own power and so it would possibly have to have been taken there inside a large aircraft --or else slung under a large helicopter-- before being deployed.    

Another possibility is that the THW was a weapon that would emit intense submillimeter (terahertz)  radiation intended to kill, or at least discombobulate, the Iranian guards who approached it on the ground.  Such a weapon whose deadly function would not at first be apparent to its victims may have been developed under US psychotronic* warfare programs that have always remained top secret. Another suggestion has been that such a THW may have emitted some chemical agent to disable those who approached it and that may have been what injured Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum rather than non-ionizing radiation.        

If either of these scenarios is correct, the operation that resulted in the Cash-Landrum fiasco must have been a dress rehearsal for the hostage rescue mission, probably flown from a US Navy carrier in the Gulf of Mexico.  The secret Trojan Horse Weapon (if that is what it was) when fired up, intentionally or otherwise, presumably went out of control and had to be temporarily put down on that road in Texas with the resulting radiation burns to the unfortunate women and grandson Colby who were in the car that happened to stop near it.

If this operation was as I have suggested, it was most certainly Top Secret --to the very highest level of security.  Whether or not such a Project Honey Badger rehearsal was sanctioned by President Carter in the last days of his presidency, we cannot tell.  It may well have been solely authorized by some senior figure in the Pentagon.  When it failed, all traces of the operation had to be covered up and it does seem quite likely that someone in the military may have steered those who were asking questions towards the extraordinary idea that this was a random UFO incident simply to prevent the real explanation becoming public knowledge.

This also raises the intriguing question of whether the UFO which landed in Rendlesham Forest and was approached by Jim Penniston and John Burroughs could have been another kind of Honey Badger THW which was also being given a completely secret dress rehearsal test.  That is pure speculation but it seems no less likely than an alien spacecraft landing by mistake in Rendlesham Forest during the very same week that the Cash-Landrum episode happened in Texas.   If there ever was a US Trojan Horse Weapon being tested by the 160^th SOAR (Airborne) or other Special Forces in December 1980, it never had to be used in anger since the US embassy hostages in Tehran were freed just three weeks later when President Reagan came into office.

George Wingfield

April 2015

* “psychotronic” was a word used to describe certain weapons or techniques that may have been developed for use by the US military during the 1980s and early 1990s.  These could have included the effects of electromagnetic submillimeter or microwave radiation on the brain of enemy combatants. The word “psychotronic” is evidently no longer used and does not even appear in most dictionaries.     

Also see "The DAIG Investigation of the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident, John B Alexander's Involvement and Opinions" at URL:-

www.blueblurrylines.com/2013/11/the-daig-investigation-of-cash-landrum.html

(Note:  When I asked John Alexander what the Cash-Landrum UFO and the associated 23 helicopters could possibly have been if the US military were in no way involved during this episode, he replied they could only have been a genuine UFO and that the helicopters must have been a virtual reality perception which was imprinted by the UFO on the minds of the witnesses, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and 7-yr old Colby.  I find that explanation very hard to accept --GW.)