Reuters news agency may have been the first to contact Kirton, since his statements to Reuters are the least definitive compared to those made elsewhere. Reuters identified Kirton as a nondescript "duty officer," not an intelligence officer, and said that his statements represented quotes from Ramey. In the Reuters article, Kirton did not specifically identify the recovered object.
Instead he gave a physical description very similar to that given the FBI but said nothing about it being or resembling a radar target. He did say it might be a weather balloon, but one not allegedly recognizable by anybody at the base as "an army type balloon," However, not only did Ramey early on sometimes identify the debris as resembling a radar target (e.g., San Francisco Examiner and early UP story in the San Francisco News), when Ramey announced the official identification, he was quoted as saying that it "definitely was a United States Army device." (See AP main story) As was often the case, the story being given the press was inconsistent. More
