"Of the 183 who observed a streak of light, 102 gave information about the origin of the streak. Six said the streak originated from the air, and 96 said that it originated from the surface. Of the 96 who said it originated from the surface, 40 said it originated from the sea and 10 said it originated from land. One hundred and twenty-eight witnesses reported an immediate end to the streak, 85 described it ending in an explosion, 32 said it ended in a fireball, and 11 said it ended in a flash."
Now if eyewitnesses are always reliable, and we should take their testimony as gospel, how come there are so many variances in just the 183 who said they saw "a streak." And what about the 550 witnesses who reported no such thing?
This is from when they first noticed it. The (very) few who said it "originiated" from the air may well have simply missed the beginning. But those who reported that it originated from the surface (the vast majority) are not likely to have all seen something only airborne, and hallucinated a surface origin.
"Of the 96 who said it originated from the surface, 40 said it originated from the sea and 10 said it originated from land."
This could easily be explained by the horizon visible to those witnesses. If the view of the ocean is obscured, or if tehy misjudged the distance to the streak, they could easily place the origin on land even if it were from the water. Note that several thought it was a "firework" - which only goes a few hundred yards up into the air. If they were actually seeing a missile that ascended nearly three miles into the air, they will correspondingly infer that the launch site is that much closer. In any case, an investigator trying to determine what actually happened doesn't look at two contradictory statements and says "therefore, they are both wrong;" and it is unreasonable to imagine that any witnesses correctly understood the full 3D trajectory of a very unusual object that lasted only some few seconds. Instead, an investigator should try to triangulate each sighting, and construct for himself the full 3D trajectory of the object which these people saw. But as I mentioned, neither the NTSB nor the FBI had any interest in doing this; only Donaldson and Goddard actually attempted to do this. Why do you suppose that is?
"One hundred and twenty-eight witnesses reported an immediate end to the streak, 85 described it ending in an explosion, 32 said it ended in a fireball, and 11 said it ended in a flash."
All of these things are consistent with a missile whose rocket engine burned out before impact, which was an explosion.
Now if eyewitnesses are always reliable, and we should take their testimony as gospel, how come there are so many variances in just the 183 who said they saw "a streak."
Perspective and incorrectly inferring the 3D trajectory. The streak was so far away from most of the witnesses that they had essentially no accurate depth perception - however, they might have made assumptions about the scale of the event and (incorrectly) reported deductions based on these assumptions. Better would to for an investigator to filter out just the pure observations from each witness, and try to fold them into a consistent scenario that checks with all the observations. But again, the NTSB, FBI and for that matter CIA seemed only interested in discrediting the witnesses, leaving the job to Donaldson and Goddard. Why do you suppose that that is?
And what about the 550 witnesses who reported no such thing?
You have got to be joking! Of course not all witnesses saw the entire event - only those who were looking in the direction of the flare would have seen it at all. Those who weren't but who saw the explosion obviously doesn't either rule out a missile nor contradict the testimony of those who did see a streak.