ロズウェル事件

ロズウェルUFO事件（Roswell UFO incident）は、アメリカ合衆国ニュー・メキシコ州ロズウェル付近での、少なくとも1つの異星の宇宙船とその占有者（複数）の、1947年における回収と主張されている事件である。

残骸は1947年7月初めにロズウェル付近の農場から回収されたし、Roswell Army Air Field は、「空飛ぶ円盤flying disk」が発見されたと述べるプレスリリースを出し、強いメディアの興味をかきたてた。数時間以内に、気象観測気球が回収されたと、かわりに主張する反応が発せられたし、続く記者会見は、気象観測気球の特徴をより強めるように思われる物だと言われる残骸を大きく取り扱った。

事件はすぐに忘れられ、約30年間UFO研究家によってすら、ほとんど無視された。そして1978年、Stanton T. FriedmanはJesse Marcelにインタビューした。Marcelは、1947年の残骸の回収に巻き込まれた。Marcel は、異星人の船の回収の隠蔽があったという信念を表した。彼の話は、UFOサークルで語られ始め、ドキュメンタリー“UFOs Are Real”に収められている。 1980年2月、Marcelとのインタビューは、National Enquirerにあらわれ、国内国外の注目を集めた。

続く年々に、その他の目撃者と報告が現れた。それらは重要な新たな細部を追加したが、それには、異星の乗り物と異星人じたいを回収する大きな軍事作戦、11箇所もの墜落現場、証人威迫の話が含まれている。1989年, 元葬儀屋Glenn Dennis は、ロズウェル基地で実施された異星人の検死解剖を含む詳細な話を明らかにした。

これらの報告に応えて、また政治的圧力を受けて、政府監査室は、調査を開始し、空軍長官のOfficeに内部調査を実施するように指示した。 その結果は2つの報告であった。1995年公表の第1のは、1947年に回収されたと報告されるmaterialはおそらく、Mogulと称する秘密の政府計画からの残骸であろうと結論を出した。1997年公表の第2のは、 異星人の報告に取り組み、これらの報告はおそらく、1950年代に行われた、Project High Diveのような計画における神人同形論的ダミーの回収の変形された記憶であろうと結論を出した。時間圧縮と記憶混合の心理学的効果は、問題の年月の不一致を説明する。これらの報告は、多くの人によって故意の誤報かまたは全く信用しがたいかのいずれかとして無視されていた。ただし、有意な数のUFO研究家は何か異星の乗物が実際に巻き込まれているという蓋然性をあらかじめ見込んでいるが。

こんにち「ロズウェル」は「UFO」とほとんど同義であり、最も有名なUFO事件と主張される事に数えられるようである。しかし実際に何が起こったのかに関して大きく相違する視点があり、 どういう証拠が信じられ得るか、また割り引いて扱われるかについて熱い議論がある。それゆえ、どちらか一方からの奮闘的な反論を避ける一連の事件を集めることは困難である。

The Cold War, military experiments and flying saucers

America in 1947 was at the beginning of the Cold War, an era of intense competition with the Soviet Union and its allies. At times, a paranoid level of fear of the threat from the Soviets permeated society, and the government and military was sometimes prone to excessive crackdowns of its citizenry and of engaging in obsessive secrecy.

In context of the Cold War, numerous secret military programs were in place in order to try to gain intelligence and an advantage on the Soviets, in particular in relation to their nuclear programs. These programs were often highly compartmentalized; one branch of the military frequently had no knowledge of what another branch was doing. During 1947, numerous military programs involving long balloon trains were being carried out in various parts of the country. Some of these experimental balloon trains were hundreds of feet long, linking dozens of balloons and other apparatus on a line. Because they were hard to hide, cover stories were fed to the press, usually suggesting atmospheric or astronomical research being carried out. [8]

At the same time, the summer of 1947 saw an unprecedented number of reports of “flying discs” and “flying saucers.” One tally of reports counted 853 during June and July. The term “flying saucer” was coined in June of 1947 when newspaper reports paraphrased the description of the first of these accounts by Kenneth Arnold who later claimed he told a reporter the objects he saw "flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." He witnessed nine objects traveling in a chain, flying at a great speed. They flew "like the tail of a Chinese kite" and estimated their speed as “1,200 miles an hour.” [9] The neologism “flying saucer” did not immediately imply alien involvement, as numerous reports of “flying saucer” recoveries were reported which were of terrestrial origin. [10] The term “UFO” or “unidentified flying object” was first used in print in 1950.

Many of the hundreds of “flying saucer” reports were likely misidentified balloon trains, or other prosaic objects. Since the very term “flying saucer” had just been coined, there was no specific identification in the public mind of what one of these objects should look like, or from where they originated. [11] It was suspected within government and military circles that their own programs accounted for most of these reports, but the possibility that some of them might be connected to unknown Soviet spy projects could not be discounted, therefore there was a particular interest in identifying these unidentified objects to ensure there were no security issues at stake. [12]

One of the military experiments being conducted at the time in New Mexico was Mogul, a project designed to attempt to detect Soviet nuclear tests via high-altitude balloon launches. The Soviets, in 1947, had not yet detonated a nuclear device. They succeeded in 1949. These balloon experiments were sent aloft from Alamogordo. In June and July 1947, several of the balloon trains got lost.

At the same time during this period of heightened awareness and multiple reports of “flying discs/saucers,” a couple reported seeing a “large glowing object” traveling at high speeds on July 2nd near Roswell. The object disappeared over the tree line, and the couple who witnessed it reported it after the news of a recovered “flying disc” emerged several days later.

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947, announcing "capture" of "flying saucer"

Contemporary accounts of a “flying disc” at Roswell

The Sacramento Bee article detailing the RAAF statements.

On July 8th, 1947, reports emerged from the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) that a “flying disc” had been recovered. There exist several contemporary accounts of the sequence of events; the following reconstructs what happened according to those initial accounts.

Debris discovered and recovered

On June 14th, farmer William “Mac” Brazel, who was working at the Foster Ranch about 70 miles north of Roswell, noticed some strange debris on the ranch while making his rounds. This date (or “three weeks” before July 8th) is a serious point of contention. But it is repeated in several of the initial accounts, in particular the stories which seem to quote Brazel himself, and in a telex quoting Sheriff George Wilcox who Brazel first contacted about his find, a telex sent a few hours after the story broke. The initial report from the RAAF said the find was “sometime last week,” but that description was likely a fourth-hand account of what Brazel actually said, and mentions the sheriff as the one who contacted them about the find. [13]

Brazel was with his son Vernon when he saw a “large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.” He was too busy to pay much attention to it, but returned on July 4th with his son, his wife and his daughter to gather up the material,[14] though he was also described as having gathered some of the material earlier, rolling it together and stashing it under some brush. [15] The next day, Saturday, July 5th, he was in town and heard the reports about “flying discs” and wondered if that is what he had recovered. On Monday, July 7th, Brazel went into town, saw Sheriff Wilcox and “whispered kinda confidential like” that he may have found a flying disk. [16]Another account quotes Wilcox as saying that Brazel reported the object on Sunday, July 6th.[17]

Sheriff Wilcox in turn called Roswell Army Air Field and Major Jesse Marcel and a “man in plainclothes” accompanied Brazel back to the ranch where more pieces were picked up. "[W]e spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon looking for any more parts of the weather device," said Marcel. "We found a few more patches of tinfoil and rubber." [18] They then attempted to reassemble the object. Brazel said they couldn’t reconstruct it after trying to make a kite out of the debris, and Marcel took the debris to the RAAF, by the next morning. As described in the July 9th edition of the Roswell Daily Record, “The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.”

A telex uncovered in the 1990s sent to an FBI office from their office in Fort Worth, Texas, quoted a Major from the Eighth Air Force Base on July 8th: “THE DISC IS HEXAGONAL IN SHAPE AND WAS SUSPENDED FROM A BALLON [sic] BY CABLE, WHICH BALLON [sic] WAS APPROXIMATELY TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER. MAJOR CURTAN FURTHER ADVISED THAT THE OBJECT FOUND RESEMBLES A HIGH ALTITUDE WEATHER BALLOON WITH A RADAR REFLECTOR, BUT THAT TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION BETWEEN THEIR OFFICE AND WRIGHT FIELD HAD NOT [unintelligible] BORNE OUT THIS BELIEF.” [19]

News reports: "flying disc" becomes "weather balloon"

Early on Tuesday, July 8th, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a news report, perhaps by phone, to several news outlets who in turn put the story on the wire: “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriffs office of Chaves County. The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher's home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.” [20]

Col. William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the 509th, contacted General Roger M. Ramey of the Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas, and Ramey ordered the object be flown to his base. At the base, Warrant Officer Irving Newton confirmed Ramey’s preliminary opinion, identifying the object as being a weather balloon and its “kite.” [21] The “kite” being a rawin device, a radar reflector used to track distant balloons from the ground. Another news release was issued, this time from the Fort Worth base, describing the object as being a “weather balloon.”

ファイル:Gen Ramey balloon 7-8-47.jpg

Gen. Roger Ramey (kneeling) and chief of staff Col. Thomas Dubose posed with weather balloon and radar reflector, July 8, 1947, Fort Worth, Texas. A controversial message about what happened is in Ramey's hand (boxed) and enlarged below.

At the base in Fort Worth, several news photographs were taken that day, July 8th, of debris said to be from the object. The debris was consistent with the general description of a rawin device and rubber associated with a weather balloon. Ramey, Col. Thomas J. Dubose and Marcel all posed with the debris. With word out that this was a “weather balloon,” Brazel arrived at the offices of the Roswell Daily Record with a radio station reporter and was interviewed by The Record and a reporter from Associated Press’ Albuquerque office. He described the material (see above) and dismissed Fort Worth’s “weather balloon” description of the object. Citing several other weather balloons he had recovered previously on the ranch, he said: “I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon. But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it." National newspaper headlines such as “Grounded Flying Saucer Only a Weather Balloon” from the Los Angeles Times on July 9th [22] were typical, and the incident was quickly forgotten and barely mentioned even in pro-UFO literature for more than 30 years.

30+ years later: Testimony of the primary witnesses

In 1978, author Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel, the only person known to have accompanied the Roswell debris from the Foster ranch to Fort Worth, its last confirmed destination. Over the next few years, the accounts he and others would give elevated Roswell from a forgotten incident to perhaps the most famous UFO case of all time.

Marcel and the other primary witnesses in many cases gave accounts that roughly corroborated each other, though small details often differed. Given the minimum 31-year gap between the incident and any testimony, discrepancies are not surprising. While many of the descriptions seemed to be consistent with objects from a weather-balloon-type object, some descriptions seemed to suggest very exotic materials were recovered.

This section describes the accounts from the various primary witnesses, which are in most cases more specific than what was reported in 1947. “Primary” witnesses are those who are known to have had direct contact with or saw the debris in question. In some cases, it is not certain whether those who claimed to have been in contact with the material actually had been in contact.

Jesse Marcel’s testimony

In 1978, Marcel, retired from the military, was a TV repairman in Houma, Louisiana when contacted by Friedman. Though initially vague about details of the Roswell incident – he couldn’t recall the year it happened – he soon recounted details that seemed to suggest that the debris he found was exotic. He additionally believed that the true nature of what he helped recover was being suppressed by the military. His accounts were featured in the 1979 documentary “UFOs are Real,” and in a 1980 National Enquirer article, and are largely responsible for making the Roswell incident famous. Marcel: “There was all kinds of stuff - small beams about three eighths or a half inch square with some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher. These looked something like balsa wood, and were about the same weight, except that they were not wood at all. They were very hard, although flexible, and would not burn…. One thing that impressed me about the debris was the fact that a lot of it looked like parchment. It had little numbers with symbols that we had to call hieroglyphics because I could not understand them. They could not be read, they were just like symbols, something that meant something, and they were not all the same, but the same general pattern, I would say. They were pink and purple. They looked like they were painted on. These little numbers could not be broken, could not be burned. I even took my cigarette lighter and tried to burn the material we found that resembled parchment and balsa, but it would not burn - wouldn't even smoke. But something that is even more astonishing is that the pieces of metal that we brought back were so thin, just like tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes. I didn't pay too much attention to that at first, until one of the boys came to me and said: ‘You know that metal that was in there? I tried to bend the stuff and it won't bend. I even tried it with a sledgehammer. You can't make a dent on it.’”

Sheridan Cavitt’s testimony

Sheridan Cavitt has been identified as having accompanied Marcel to the Foster Ranch, possibly the “man in plainclothes” mentioned in one of the contemporary articles. He was interviewed in the 1990s when the Air Force investigated the allegations of a cover-up. “It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil, something of that type and we gathered up some of it. I don't know whether we even tried to get all of it. It wasn’t scattered; well, what I call, you know, extensively.”

The Brazel and Marcel family testimony

By 1978, Mac Brazel was dead. But members of his family had helped gather material from the Foster ranch, and several of them were interviewed. Bessie Brazel, Mac’s daughter, was mentioned in some of the 1947 stories. She said this to some researchers: “There was what appeared to be pieces of heavily waxed paper and a sort of aluminum-like foil. Some of these pieces had something like numbers and lettering on them, but there were no words that we were able to make out. Some of the metal-foil like pieces had a sort of tape stuck to them, and when these were held to the light they showed what looked like pastel flowers or designs. Even though the stuff looked like tape it could not be peeled off or removed at all. It was very light in weight but there sure was a lot of it.”

She also signed an affidavit that had additional descriptions: “The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst. The pieces were small, the largest I remember measuring was about the same as the diameter of a basketball. Most of it was a kind of double-sided material, foil-like on one side and rubber-like on the other. Both sides were grayish silver in color, the foil more silvery than the rubber. Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape…

“…The foil-rubber material could not be torn like ordinary aluminum foil can be torn.”

Her brother Bill Brazel Jr. confirmed some of what she said: “There was some tinfoil and some wood and on some of the wood it had Japanese or Chinese figures" He additionally said: “There was some wooden-like particles I picked up. These were like balsa wood in weight, but a bit darker in color and much harder…This stuff…weighed nothing, yet you couldn't scratch it with your fingernail like ordinary balsa, and you couldn't break it either.” [23]

Marcel’s son Jesse Jr. also saw the debris. After leaving the Foster ranch and before returning to the Roswell base, Marcel went home and showed the debris to his family. Marcel Jr.: “[it was] foil-like stuff, very thin, metallic-like but not metal, and very tough. There was also some structural-like material too - beams and so on. Also a quantity of black plastic material which looked organic in nature...Imprinted along the edge of some of the beam remnants there were hieroglyphic-type characters. I recently questioned my father about this, and he recalled seeing these characters also and even described them as being a pink or purplish-pink color. Egyptian hieroglyphics would be a close visual description of the characters seen, except I don't think there were any animal figures present as there are in true Egyptian hieroglyphics...”

He would say elsewhere in a signed affidavit: “There were three categories of debris; a thick, foil like metallic gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plastic-like material, like Bakelite; and there were fragments of what appeared to be I-beams… On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. This writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved, geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to Russian, Japanese or any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics, but it had no animal-like characters.”

Roswell base and Fort Worth base witnesses

One person identified as having loaded the material onto the B-29 aircraft at Roswell to take to Fort Worth was Sergeant Robert Porter. He said in an affidavit: “I was involved in loading the B-29 with the material, which was wrapped in packages with wrapping paper. One of the pieces was triangle shaped, about 2 1/2 feet across the bottom. The rest were in small packages about the size of a shoebox. The brown paper was held with tape… The material was extremely lightweight. When I picked it up, it was just like picking up an empty package. We loaded the triangle shaped package and three shoe box-sized packages into the plane. All of the packages could have fit into the trunk of a car.”

First Lt. Robert Shirkey has also been identified as witnessing the debris being loaded onto the B-29. His account differs from Porter’s as he saw unwrapped material: “[W]e saw boxes full of aluminum-looking metal pieces being carried to the B-29. ...sticking up in one corner of the box carried by Major Marcel was a small 'I-beam' with hieroglyphic-like markings on the inner flange, in some kind of weird color, not black, not purple, but a close approximation of the two."

Irving Newton was a weather forecaster at Fort Worth, and was identified in contemporary accounts. He said: “I was convinced at the time that this was a balloon with a rawin target and remain convinced… “...the neoprene, the remnants of the balloon. The best thing I can think of, it looked like little cow pies, because this rubber material … it had been laying in the desert, in the sun and it had all shriveled up and got black.”“While I was examining the debris, Major Marcel was picking up pieces of the target sticks and trying to convince me that some notations on the sticks were alien writings. There were figures on the sticks lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings with no rhyme or reason.”

Jay Bond Johnson, the reporter/photographer whose photographs of the debris in General Ramey’s office are the only ones in existence said: "It wasn’t an impressive sight, just some aluminum-like foil, balsa wood sticks, and some burnt rubber that was stinking up the office."

Material with exotic properties

There were numerous others who claimed to have seen the material, [24] and some of them described the material as having exotic qualities. There was a tinfoil-like material which when crumpled up would regain its original shape. Brazel Jr.: “The odd thing about this foil was that you could wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed its original shape. It was quite pliable, yet you couldn't crease or bend it like ordinary metal. It was almost more like a plastic of some sort except that it was definitely metallic in nature.” Many others had similar accounts. [25]

Another unusual aspect to some of the material was its strength. Marcel Sr.: “This particular piece of metal was, I would say, about two feet long and perhaps a foot wide. See, that stuff weighs nothing, it's so thin, it isn't any thicker than the tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes. So I tried to bend the stuff, it wouldn't bend. We even tried making a dent in it with a 16-pound sledge hammer, and there was still no dent in it.” Several other witnesses gave similar accounts. [26]

Debris field descriptions

Unlike the debris descriptions which, save for reports of exotic qualities by some, are generally similar, reports of the size of the debris field on the Foster ranch and of the condition of the ground the object was found on differ in important respects.

There is a large range of descriptions of the size of the debris field, from Cavitt claiming the field was about the size of the 20-foot room he was sitting in to one account Brazel gave in 1947 of “about 200 yards diameter,” to Marcel Sr.’s description: "The wreckage was scattered over an area of about three quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide," to yet another description from 1947 quoting Brazel again saying “he found the broken remains of the weather device scattered over a square mile of land.”

Descriptions of the condition of the field ranged from no disturbance at all to descriptions of deep gouges in the terrain. Marcel Sr and Bessie Brazel said there was no disturbance, at least initially in Marcel’s case, but Brazel Jr. said “This thing made quite a track down through there. It took a year or two for it to grass back over and heal up."

Secondary witnesses: alien and spacecraft recoveries, cover-ups, witness intimidation

In addition to those who were known to have seen the debris which was reported in the 1947 accounts, there emerged a number of witnesses who claimed to have seen or heard of large military recovery operations, multiple crash sites, witness intimidation and, most spectacularly, aliens and alien craft recoveries.

Though reports included intimidation of some of the primary witnesses, none of the other reports came from those above-named witnesses who were known to be associated with the so-called “flying disc” debris recovered in 1947. These secondary witnesses in some cases had only a peripheral connection to the initial reports, but they are the chief source of reports of actual alien recoveries.

Accounts of aliens and alien spacecraft recoveries

Accounts of alien recovery first emerged in “The Roswell Incident,” by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, published in 1980. [27] An incident recounted by Barney Barnett was mentioned, where archaeologists recovered aliens on the Plains of Agustin, near Socorro, New Mexico in July 1947. Since this was significantly west of Roswell, current UFO researchers don’t generally connect it to the Roswell incident.

One person who it is said claimed to have transported aliens was known to be at the bases in question in 1947. Captain Oliver “Pappy” Henderson was never interviewed before his 1986 death, but those who knew him were. His widow, Sappho Henderson, said in an affidavit: “He pointed out [a 1980/81 newspaper article on Roswell] to me and said, ‘I want you to read this article, because it's a true story. I'm the pilot who flew the wreckage of the UFO to Dayton, Ohio. I guess now that they're putting it in the paper, I can tell you about this. I wanted to tell you for years.’ Pappy never discussed his work because of his security clearance.

“He described the beings as small with large heads for their size. He said the material that their suits were made of was different than anything he had ever seen. He said they looked strange. I believe he mentioned that the bodies had been packed in dry ice to preserve them.”[28]

Lewis Rickett claims he accompanied Sheldon Cavitt to the Foster ranch and saw debris and large gouges in the ground. He said he tried to bend a piece of metal debris but couldn’t, and was told by Cavitt, "You and I were never out here. You and I never saw this. You don't see any military people or military vehicles out here" Shortly before he died, it is claimed he told researchers a new story describing an alien spacecraft which was “long, thin with a ‘bat-like’ wing.”

Mortician Glenn Dennis said that the Roswell base called him as they needed small caskets for three corpses which had been recovered. Soon afterwards, after transporting an injured airman to the base, he said he saw strange metallic objects and was threatened by base personnel. The next day, a friend of his who was a nurse at the base called and when they met at the officer’s club, she described an alien autopsy she had stumbled in on and drew pictures for Dennis of alien corpses she had seen. Then, an officer saw him and ordered him removed by the Military Police. [29]

Brigadier General Arthur E. Exon has been identified as the highest-ranking military figure to suggest aliens and alien spacecraft were recovered at Roswell in 1947, though he cautioned that his information was all second-hand. “A couple of guys thought it might be Russian, but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from space. ...Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space."

Commentator Whitley Streiber claimed the following is a direct quote from Exon: “Everyone from the White House on down knew that what we had found was not of this world within 24 hours of our finding it.” [30]

And: "There was another location where ... apparently the main body of the spacecraft was ... where they did say there were bodies ... They were all found, apparently, outside the craft itself but were in fairly good condition. In other words, they weren't broken up a lot"

Accounts of intimidation

Lydia Sleppy was one of the first people to give an account connected to the Roswell incident. She was a Teletype operator working at an Albuquerque radio station in 1947. She claimed that the FBI ordered her to stop transmitting a Teletype story on alien bodies being recovered from Roswell. However, her story is difficult to nail down owing to the widely differing accounts she gave.[31]

Glenn Dennis, who says he visited the Roswell base and was threatened and manhandled for being there, additionally claimed that the nurse who confided in him about alien corpses subsequently was shipped off base and attempts to contact her via mail resulted in letters returned with “deceased” marked on the envelopes. [32]

Frankie Rowe, who claims her father was a firefighter who helped recover several alien bodies, told researchers that after seeing a state trooper with a piece of metal from the downed craft that showed the ability to turn into a liquid, she and her family were threatened into silence by military personnel who visited her house. She said they told them: “…they could take us out in the desert, and no one would ever find us again.”

Barbara Dugger is a granddaughter of Sheriff George Wilcox. Her grandmother was Inez Wilcox: “My grandmother said ‘Don't tell anybody. When the incident happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told George and I that if we ever told anything about the incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family would be killed.’”[33]

George "Jud" Roberts was manager of radio station KGFL in Roswell. He signed an affidavit where he claimed to have been threatened if he ran an interview his station had done with Mac Brazel. “I got a call from someone in Washington, D.C. It may have been someone in the office of [Senators] Clinton Anderson or Dennis Chavez. This person said, ‘We understand that you have some information, and we want to assure you that if you release it, it's very possible that your station's license will be in jeopardy, so we suggest that you not to do it.’ The person indicated that we might lose our license in as quickly as three days. I made the decision not to release the story.” [34]

Accounts of cover-ups

Gen. Exon: “"I know that at the time the sightings happened, it was to General Ramey ... and he, along with the people at Roswell, decided to change the story while they got their act together and got the information into the Pentagon and into the president."

General Thomas Dubose, who was chief of staff to Gen. Ramey at Fort Worth and appears in one of the photos of the debris, said this in an affidavit: “The material shown in the photographs taken in Maj. Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press.” [35]

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, "Make no mistake, Roswell happened. I've seen secret files which show the government knew about it - but decided not to tell the public…. I wasn't convinced about the existence of aliens until I started talking to the military old-timers who were there at the time of Roswell. The more government documentation on aliens I was told about, the more convinced I became."

Other claims suggesting aliens, cover-ups, etc.

ファイル:Gen Ramey Roswell message 1947.jpg

Enlargement of Gen. Ramey's held message in above photo.

The Ramey photograph

In one of the photos taken July 8 1947 of the debris claimed to have been what was recovered from the Foster ranch, General Ramey appears holding a piece of paper with text on it. Researchers have enlarged the text and there are claims that what is written includes “victims of the wreck” and other phrases seemingly in the context of an alien recovery. [36] This interpretation is hotly disputed by others who claim that whatever is written is so unclear that many words can be “seen.” [37]

The “Unholy Thirteen”

Gen. Exon claimed there was a shadowy group which he called the Unholy Thirteen who controlled and had access to whatever was recovered: “"In the '55 time period [when Exon was at the Pentagon], there was also the story that whatever happened, whatever was found at Roswell was still closely held and probably would be held until these fellows I mentioned had died so they wouldn't be embarrassed or they wouldn't have to explain why they covered it up. ...until the original thirteen died off and I don't think anyone is going to release anything [until] the last one's gone."

Roswell as an alien recovery and government cover-up

By the early 1990s, a new scenario had emerged among UFO researchers as to what they felt was the actual sequence of events at Roswell in 1947.

The original 1947 accounts were almost exclusively cover-ups. Based on the accounts of witnesses given after 1978, it was asserted that once word reached military authorities on what was found, they switched the real debris for weather balloon debris to show the press and intimidated Mac Brazel into giving a false description for his news conference, a description which was consistent with weather balloon debris.

At the same time the press was reporting that a rancher had mistaken a mere weather balloon for a flying saucer, the military engaged in a large recovery operation, sealing off large areas and warning civilians to be quiet, in some cases threatening them with death if they dared tell anyone what they saw.

There are numerous timelines to the events, and depending on what testimony is accepted, rejected or ignored, there are conflicts as to which alleged crash sites were connected to the Roswell incident, and when the military recovery operation and cover-up commenced. Some accounts focus events on the Foster ranch suggesting this triggered the alleged cover-up [38] while others suggest a recovery operation was already underway, mostly at other nearby sites, by the time Brazel went into Roswell to report his find. [39]

Here is a general account that includes a more elaborate series of events with multiple crash sites [ibid]: During the first days of July 1947, several objects were tracked by the military and seen in the general vicinity of Roswell. On or about July 4th, 1947, rancher Mac Brazel came across debris on the Foster Ranch which he managed. Other family members recalled hearing loud noises several nights before, and witnesses reported seeing fast-moving objects streaking overhead on the night of July 2nd. As early as Friday, July 4th, recovery personnel were arriving.

The next day, Saturday July 5th, numerous civilians were finding alien debris at various locations in the vicinity. As early as 5:30 a.m., teams were in place recovering bodies and debris. By that evening, alien bodies in crates were arriving at the Roswell base.

Brazel journeyed into town on Sunday, July 6th, and called on Sheriff Wilcox to let him know that he had found what he thought was one of the “flying saucers” being reported that week in the press. Wilcox called the RAAF and Marcel and at least one more officer went with Marcel to the ranch. This account says that debris Brazel took into town with him was transported to the base by Marcel and shipped to Fort Worth, then Marcel returned to Roswell and he and Cavitt went with Brazel back to the ranch.

They stayed overnight and inspected the debris field on Monday July 7th. The debris field was extensive, with large gouges in the ground. Meanwhile, early that same morning, alien corpses were being flown to Washington.

Marcel gathered more material, showed it to his family early on the morning of Tuesday July 8th, and was at the Roswell base by 6 am to report to Col. Blanchard. Blanchard promptly orders guards to be posted at roads by the debris field.

Meanwhile, reporter Walt Whitmore dropped Brazel off at the base. Whitmore had arrived at the Foster ranch late Monday night, and had interviewed Brazel about his find. He was subsequently warned not to air the interview.

Then, the Roswell base issued a press release announcing the recovery of a flying saucer.

Cargo planes full of debris were already being shipped out, but Marcel only accompanied a small amount of debris to Fort Worth. Gen. Ramey was shown the debris, but after requesting Marcel show him the location of the find in the map room, they return to find the debris replaced with weather balloon debris.

Soon, the press is told that the “flying saucer” was in fact a “weather balloon.”

The debris recovery continued into the next day, and Brazel was escorted by military officers to a news conference where he described debris from a weather balloon, and he says the debris was first seen June 14th, not early July. He is returned to base and not allowed to go home until Saturday July 12th. What he told the press, this account asserts, was what he was told to tell them by the military personnel who held him before the press conference. It was presumably coordinated to match a description of the switched material shown to reporters at Fort Worth, and the June date was presumably designed to ensure none made a connection to the reports of flying saucers in the vicinity around July 2nd.

As part of a campaign to convince the press and public these “flying saucer” reports were in fact mistakenly identified weather balloons, the military and government demonstrated numerous balloon experiments to members of the news media. To further ensure secrecy, those known to have seen or have encountered the material were given death threats or otherwise intimidated into silence, so that the official line that a “weather balloon” was misidentified as a “flying saucer” would be unchallenged in the media.

Some of the exotic material recovered, it is alleged, was reverse-engineered so that the military could gain an advantage on their Soviet rivals, and was slowly introduced as materials for commercial profit by some individuals.

The fate of the aliens themselves is unknown, though it is assumed that in some hidden vault their remains are stored.

As mentioned above, other accounts focus on Marcel and the Foster ranch, suggesting that reports of aliens and alien craft recoveries chiefly originate from there. [40]

Roswell as a myth: The skeptical response

While new reports into the 1990s seemed to suggest that there was a lot more to Roswell than the mere recovery of a “weather balloon,” skeptics instead saw the increasingly elaborate accounts as evidence of a myth being constructed rather than the uncovering of a conspiracy to hide the truth about aliens at Roswell.

Skeptics saw the sequence of events as initially reported in 1947 as being essentially accurate: A weather balloon or similar device was recovered from a ranch and personnel who had never seen such equipment before thought it might be one of the “flying saucers” being reported in the media. When personnel who were experienced with balloon experiments and their equipment saw the material, the misidentification was clarified, and a correction issued to the media.

That story was straightforward. What weren’t straightforward were the accounts to emerge 30, even 40 years later. These accounts, they argued, had all the hallmarks of a myth being constructed.

Changing testimony of the primary witnesses

A major piece of evidence for Roswell being a myth, skeptics argued, were the changing accounts of some of the primary witnesses who were at the crash site or who handled the debris. Their initial testimony in many cases made the later “UFO” scenarios seem implausible. It is far more likely, skeptics argued, that these witnesses’ initial memories were more accurate and they later added or changed details as their memories were contaminated by other accounts they had heard, than the alternate view that they newly remembered details or corrected memories that were wrong.

The most damning evidence against any alien recovery, some skeptics argue, is from the whistle-blower himself: Jesse Marcel. He was the only person known to have accompanied the debris from the Foster ranch to Fort Worth and he was the first one to voice doubts about the official explanation of what the debris was. But despite voicing the opinion that this material was “not of this world” to researcher Stanton Friedman, Marcel nevertheless positively identified the material he appears with in the photos taken at Fort Worth as part of what he recovered. “The stuff in that one photo was pieces of the actual stuff we found. It was not a staged photo.” He also appears in the 1979 film “UFOs are Real” where he said, “The newsman saw very little of the material, very small portion of it. And none of the important things, like these members that had these hieroglyphics or markings on them.” That material, all agree, is from some sort of balloon train. After it was pointed out to him that the material he posed with was balloon train material, he changed his story to say that that material was not what he recovered. [41]Skeptics argue that this was a sign that Marcel was more concerned with not looking foolish than admitting he might have been wrong.

Bill Brazel Jr. also is guilty of embellishing his initial accounts, skeptics charge. Like Marcel, he initially made no mention of anything like the gouge which emerged in later accounts, and his description of the direction of the debris was similar to Marcel’s. Brazel: "One time I asked dad [Mac Brazel] whether there was any burned spot on the ground where the wreckage was. He said no, but that he noticed on his second trip out there that some of the vegetation in the area seemed singed a bit at the tips - not burned, just singed. I don't recall seeing anything like that myself, but that's what he said."; and "He [Mac Brazel] also said that from the way this wreckage was scattered, you could tell it was traveling 'an airline route to Socorro,' which is off to the southwest of the ranch" . But as later accounts emerged telling of deep gouges from where aliens and their craft were recovered, as well as descriptions of alien vehicles traveling in a particular direction, Brazel’s accounts changed so that by the late 1980’s he was saying: "This thing made quite a track down through there. It took a year or two for it to grass back over and heal up."; and "...he [Bill Brazel] talked about a gouge with the northwest - southeast orientation" Either witness memory was pliable and possibly subject to contamination from other sources, charged skeptics, or researchers were massaging evidence to make a credible scenario (more on this later).

Despite these evolving accounts, their latter testimony is embraced by some UFO researchers, while testimony from certain witnesses whose accounts are consistent over time are ignored or denigrated. This is true for Bessie Brazel’s accounts that suggest a balloon recovery. “What's important is that her presence within the critical time frame cannot be corroborated, and her testimony cannot be considered conclusive," said some researchers. This despite her presence mentioned in news reports from 1947 and their embrace of her brother Bill’s testimony when he was not present when the debris was recovered.

No accounts of aliens and descriptions consistent with a weather balloon, not with an alien spacecraft

Skeptics point out that, save for some witnesses describing exotic qualities of the recovered material, none of the primary witnesses described anything consistent with the sort of debris one might expect from a crashed alien vehicle, and none made mention of any alien corpses. The numerous witness accounts of those known to have been in contact with the debris describe material largely consistent with balloon train material.

The stories of aliens and their craft come from others whose connection to the events in 1947 are dubious, said skeptics, and those who claim those reports are accurate have failed to explain satisfactorily why the primary witnesses fail to mention anything about aliens, or even having heard reports of alien recoveries.

“Cover-up” accounts implausible

To skeptics accounts of a cover-up are contrived attempts to explain away inconvenient testimony, especially from Mac Brazel. His account, at face value, suggests mis-identified balloon debris. Claims that Col. Thomas Dubose confirmed a cover-up with switched material when photos were taken in Fort Worth are misleading, they assert. Other witnesses who claimed cover-up were not there and were quoting people second-hand, therefore their testimony is not compelling.

To believe that Mac Brazel was seized by the military and forced to tell reporters a false account requires us to also believe that a military in “cover up” mode would at the same time issue a press release publicizing the very “flying saucer” they were supposedly trying to pretend didn’t exist, skeptics point out. [42]Even if that objection is put aside, since Brazel was reported to have been in town Monday to tell of his find, and the press report went out the next morning, there was virtually no time to get him to change his story. Claims that he went into town the previous day are also implausible as numerous witnesses say he was in Roswell to do business as well as talk to the sheriff about his find. In 1947 America, there would have been no business to do on a Sunday.[43]

Finally, contemporary accounts said that he arrived at the press conference not with a military escort, but with reporter W. E. Whitmore, whose presence with Brazel has been confirmed by numerous witnesses. [44] One witness account from Roswell Daily Record editor Paul McEvoy says Brazel arrived with a military escort, [ibid]but since his own paper said Brazel arrived with Whitmore, it would seem that McEvoy would have to have been part of the cover-up, skeptics point out.

Different scenarios suggest that a military recovery operation was taking place outside of the Foster ranch, but this still required military higher-ups to be aware of Mac Brazel’s find so as to sequester him. But if the various parts of the military were working together efficiently enough to do that, again, why issue a press release?

Further evidence of a “cover up” came from the statement retired General Thomas Dubose signed in 1991. Dubose was one of three people to have posed with the debris at Fort Worth in 1947. Skeptics say that while the statement he signed confirming a “cover story” may be accurate, the statement does not indicate that the material was switched. They argue that to Dubose, it may have seemed self-evident that there was a cover story – but for some military project, not for a recovered alien craft. Skeptics charge that researchers misled readers into believing Dubose was confirming the cover-up of alien material and of switching the debris by avoiding directly asking him what was being “covered up.” When someone later did ask directly whether the material he posed with was debris recovered, Dubose emphatically and categorically denied having switched any material:

Jamie Shandara: “There are two researchers [Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt] who are presently saying that the debris in General Ramey's office had been switched and that you men had a weather balloon there."

Dubose: “Oh Bull! That material was never switched!”

Shandara: “So, what you're saying is that the material in General Ramey's office was the actual debris brought in from Roswell?”

Dubose: “That's right.”

Skeptics argued that there very well could have been a cover story, but for balloon material which formed part of a classified program. This viewpoint would become a central part of the skeptical reconstruction of the 1947 incident when the Air Force issued several reports later in the 90s.

Arguments from authority aren’t evidence

Some “evidence,” skeptics point out, are mere arguments from authority and reflect only the belief from prominent individuals as to what happened. Without actual first-hand knowledge of the events, this evidence is little more than the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam.

General Arthur Exon was at Wright field in 1947, the alleged final destination for the Roswell debris. He is quoted as saying: "Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space" But skeptics point out that Exon, when shown the book with his quotes, wrote author Randle a letter saying in part: “...I did not know anything firsthand. Although I did believe you did quote me accurately, I do believe that in your writings you gave more credence and impression of personal and direct knowledge that my recordings would indicate on their own!”

Another variation of the "argument from authority" is the assumption that highly trained military personnel couldn’t mistake routine balloon debris with something “not of this world.” Skeptics point out that since the term “flying saucer” had just been coined, there was no expectation on what such an object “should” look like and objects were recovered at the time which were called “flying saucers” but bore no resemblance to that description [45]. But besides the obvious critique that it is nearly impossible to know what someone does not know, skeptics point out that radar was comparatively novel in 1947, and despite the Roswell base’s status at the time of being the only nuclear-equipped base on the planet, they were not yet equipped with radar equipment.[46] Much of the material described seems consistent with material used to be detected by radar. Some personnel at the Fort Worth base were experienced with balloon equipment, and they instantly recognized the debris for what it was, skeptics argue. Further, there is no evidence in Jesse Marcel’s military record that he had any experience with the material used in balloon trains. Since he identified material which appears to be a rawin device as part of what he recovered, skeptics argue, it seems he was later too embarrassed to admit he had simply been unfamiliar with this sort of equipment.

Alien recovery stories implausible

Skeptics had more difficulty explaining the various accounts of alien recoveries, though the Air Force would by the mid-90s come up with a detailed explanation as to those accounts (see below).

But skeptics did point out that, when added up, there were an implausible 11 alien recovery sites being reported, and these events bore little or no resemblance to the events initially reported in 1947 or recounted by the primary witnesses later. Some of these memories could have been confused accounts of the several known recoveries of injured and dead from four military plane crashes in the vicinity which occurred 1948-50. [[47]] And at least some of these events could have been recoveries of dummies. Skeptics pointed out that certain researchers in their books omitted descriptions from witnesses who stated that what they saw may have been dummy recoveries and not aliens. An example of this is how testimony from Jim Ragsdale appeared in “The Truth about the UFO crash at Roswell”, were he said he saw: "...bodies or something laying there. They looked like bodies. They weren't very long...four or five foot long at the most" .

But when the Air Force later requested full transcripts and published them in one of their reports on the incident, it is apparent, skeptics charge, that careful editing omitted Ragsdale’s qualifying remarks:

Ragsdale: “...but it was either dummies or bodies or something laying there... One part was kind of buried in the ground...and part of it was sticking out of the ground... Yeah...and I'm sure that was bodies...either bodies or dummies…

Donald Schmitt: “Why do you say dummies?”

Ragsdale: “The federal government could have been doing something because they didn't want anyone to know what this was ...they was using dummies in those damned things...they could use remote control.”

Contradictory accounts embraced

Skeptics point out that, depending on the researcher, there seem to be completely different scenarios as to what happened in Roswell: An account centred around the Foster ranch and Jesse Marcel; or, an account where that account is peripheral to the “real” recovery which happened at other locations in the vicinity. Or both.

Some of the main researchers have embraced both accounts. Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt, perhaps the most dogged researchers of the Roswell incident with two major books between them and several more by Randle since, initially focused on Marcel and the Foster ranch as the main crash site in “UFO Crash at Roswell.” Then, in their next book, “The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell,” the crash happens several days later and at a location far from the Foster ranch. Marcel and Brazel are relegated to mere mentions and, as one skeptic notes, the new accounts contradict the old accounts. [48]

Later, discrepancies with certain accounts and problems with research done by Donald Schmitt would cause Kevin Randle to reject much of the evidence from “The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell,” yet many who embrace the UFO explanation still quote many of these discredited accounts (more below). [ibid]

Theories and Analysis

Conventional Theories

The Mogul Balloon theory

1994/95 Air Force Roswell report

Pushpressure from a Congressional General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation initiated by New Mexico Congressmen Steven Schiff, the Air Force in 1994/95 presented evidence that the crash was actually that of a lost Project Mogul balloon launched from nearby Alamogordo, New Mexico, whose top secret purpose was long-distance detection of expected future Russian A-bomb tests. The early Mogul balloon arrays consisted of about two dozen rubber weather balloons and sometimes had several attached radar targets, balsa wood kites covered with a foil/paper material, used for tracking. They claimed this fully accounted for the 1947 debris descriptions, particularly rancher Brazel's, and matched the photos taken in General Ramey's office. Furthermore, the balloon arrays could be up to 600 feet in length, and this was said to account for the large size of the debris field reported by Brazel and Marcel. The Air Force declared the "Roswell case" officially closed.

A few weeks before the GAO released its own report in June 1995, columnist Jack Anderson of the Washington Post wrote that GAO investigators didn't believe the Air Force. They were "quietly skeptical about whether the U.S. Air Force told the truth" and were "not satisfied with the Air Force explanation," though they didn't believe the Air Force was covering up a UFO incident. However, one GAO source told Anderson, "...we do believe that something did happen at Roswell... Something big. We don't know if it was a plane that crashed with a nuclear device on it ... or if it was some other experimental situation. But everything we've seen so far points to an attempt on the part of the Air Force to lead anybody that looks at this down another track." [49]

The Air Force based their Mogul theory primarily on interviews with a few surviving Project Mogul personnel and comparing descriptions of the Mogul balloons with statements from witnesses in 1947 and today. In particular, rancher Brazel's mention of "tape with flower patterns" was said to be a perfect match for tape allegedly used in the construction of the radar targets sometimes attached to the balloons.

Critics counter that the report was written by Air Force counterintelligence agents and charge they used classic propaganda techniques of ridicule, selective quotations, and omission of contradictory evidence, such as anomalous debris descriptions or testimony about a coverup, such as from General Dubose. In fact, Dubose, an important primary witness and one of their own generals, was never mentioned. They also note that the Mogul personnel were not directly involved and have no idea what may or may not have been recovered in the field.

The one primary witness the Air Force did interview was Sheridan Cavitt, the Army Counterintelligence Corp agent who accompanied Major Marcel and rancher Brazel back to the ranch and participated in recovery of the material. The Air Force claimed that Cavitt's balloon testimony also supported their theory. However, critics contend that Cavitt's testimony was not credible and actually contradicted the Air Force's Mogul balloon hypothesis. Cavitt claimed to find a balloon crash no bigger than his living room and denied any markings on the debris, including the so-called "flower patterns," claiming stories of such "hieroglyphics" came solely from crashed saucer promoters. Critics charge that Cavitt was merely repeating the original 1947 weather balloon cover story. Cavitt also denied going out with Marcel or ever meeting rancher Brazel. Critics note this begs the question how Cavitt found his tiny balloon crash without Brazel's help. It also directly contradicts Marcel's testimony and 1947 newspaper stories, including a statement by Brazel that Cavitt was with them. Finally they point out that Cavitt also contradicted himself by telling researchers for years that he wasn't involved in any way and/or not at Roswell at the time.

The Air Force also noted in their 1994/95 report that they deliberately weren't addressing the issue of alien bodies. One justification given was that the crash wreckage was from a Project Mogul balloon which had "no 'alien' passengers therein." Another reason they said was that some of the claims had been shown to be hoaxes or made by anonymous witnesses. Critics of the report note that the first reason is an example of circular reasoning, since the Air Force was using its own unproven explanation as justification for its other conclusion of no bodies being involved. Some witnesses were also clearly not hoaxers or anonymous, a notable example being Gen. Exon, whom the Air Force never interviewed.

1997 Air Force "case closed" report

ファイル:Test dummies.jpg

The USAF argued these 6-foot test dummies from the 1950s closely resembled reports of small alien bodies from the Roswell crash in 1947.

However, after initially ridiculing the notion of bodies, the Air Force changed positions and did a follow-up investigation examining possible sources for the reports of bodies. In 1997 they issued another "case closed" report stating that stories of alien bodies were actually distortions of various aviation experiments from the 1950s and 1960s. They claimed to show that the testimony of the people saying they had seen bodies near Roswell was in good agreement with actual events involving crash test dummies dropped from high altitude balloons, aircraft accidents, and a manned balloon accident. The time discrepancy between the 1947 incident and the later period of crash test dummy drops and the accident they said could be accounted for by distortions of memory.

Critics of the 1997 "crash dummies" report note that it is inconsistent with the Air Force's earlier position that there was nothing to the stories of bodies because all witnesses were unreliable. Indeed, some of the witness testimony they relied most heavily on were from the same people strongly suspected of hoaxing. It is also argued that there is no resemblance between the six-foot test-dummies made to human proportions and the descriptions of small, non-human, decomposing bodies. Also the experiments were conducted in areas of New Mexico that were remote from Brazel's ranch and where witnesses said bodies were found. Finally, it is argued, the severe memory distortion theory is at best highly questionable and cannot account for the serious differences in times, locations, and body descriptions.

The question has been raised why the Air Force chose to deal with the issue of bodies after initially ridiculing and avoiding it. Speculation from some UFO researchers is that this may have been the result of pressure from the Clinton White House. President Bill Clinton is known to have had an interest in Roswell, instructing friend and associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell to find out what happened (reported in Hubbell's memoirs). In November 1995, only a few days before the Air Force issued the final version of its first Roswell report, Clinton responded in a prepared speech to a child's letter about Roswell during a trip to Northern Ireland. Clinton said that as far as he knew "an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico," but then added, "If the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn't tell me about it, either, and I want to know." (See also 2005 Clinton Roswell comments in Recent Developments below, where he again states his doubts about Roswell but again raises the possibility of information being withheld from him.)

The question remains that if it was not a flying saucer, why the initial reports of a recovered "flying disk" and government secrecy? Here is a theory proposed by skeptic Karl T. Pflock in his book Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe:

• Some officers at Roswell, particularly Major Marcel, allegedly bungled the identification of the Mogul balloon equipment and then compounded the blunder by putting out a press release that they had instead recovered a "flying disk."
• Once the crash was publicly revealed and since Project Mogul was top secret, a coverup was imposed to protect the project's secrecy.

Proponents of this theory further claim the balloons used in Project Mogul were extremely strange looking and would have appeared otherworldly to observers, and the project itself was so heavily classified it was nearly unknown outside of the higher branches of the U.S. government.

Those who dispute this interpretation note that only the purpose of Project Mogul was classified, but the main components were not, being standard meteorological equipment such as rubber weather balloons and radar-target kites made of balsa wood and foil/paper also used for wrapping candy bars. None of this would have appeared otherworldly to anyone. It is also pointed out that such flimsy materials do not match the many descriptions of anomalous, extra-strong and heat-resistant debris reported by witnesses such as Marcel, Rickett, Brazel, Jr., and Exon.

A clear example of the non-classified, public side of the equipment and project was a scientific article written by three of the Mogul people in December 1947, published in the Journal of Meteorology in May 1948, and titled "Controlled-Altitude Free Balloons." It showed multiple diagrams of the altitude-control equipment used on the Mogul balloon flights, a photo of one of the new polyethylene balloons that replaced the original rubber weather balloons, detailed how the balloons were tracked, and had multiple graphs of some of the flights. The only thing left out was the top-secret purpose of some of the flights, namely listening for distant Soviet A-bomb tests. (Attachment 14 in 1995 Air Force Roswell report)

It is further argued that Mogul records indicate that the military was unconcerned about civilians stumbling across other Mogul balloon crashes, since the components were unclassified and the balloon's top-secret purpose could not be discerned from the debris. One such noted incident from June 8 involved another New Mexico rancher, who immediately notified Alamogordo Air Force Base, which then sent out three men to retrieve the remains of the balloon. This is completely unlike the very large and secretive military response to what rancher Brazel found at his place in early July. However, some skeptics counter that the situtation was different because Brazel first claimed he found a "flying disk" and not a balloon. While this might explain an initial difference in response by the military, it is not clear why they would continue to behave in a heavy-handed manner once they had an opportunity to examine the debris. There was nothing secret or mysterious about any of the Mogul balloon debris.

Another point raised is that historically the military made no attempt to conceal the existence of the Mogul balloons. (Indeed, as some of the former Mogul people testified, it was impossible to do so.) For example, the day after the Roswell base press release, a mock Mogul balloon launch was staged for the press at Alamogordo and used to try to explain both the Roswell events and the recent nationwide flood of flying saucer reports (see Kenneth Arnold). Again, it is contended, this is inconsistent with the notion that a crashed Mogul balloon would be bathed in high secrecy, even if the purpose of the project was top secret.

Regarding Pflock's claim that Major Marcel was both incompetent and a publicity seeker, Marcel defenders note that his subsequent career and performance reviews by his superiors do not seem to bear this out. For example, and became the chief briefing and intelligence officer of a top secret project to learn of Soviet A-bomb tests. (Ironically, part of this program's intelligence involved Project Mogul.) It is pointed out that none of this fits the profile of an incompetent.

The nuclear accident theory

There is also some speculation that the Roswell incident was the result of a broken arrow: an accident involving a nuclear weapon. Even the GAO considered this possibility, according to columnist Jack Anderson. Some have proposed that the military created the cover story of a "flying disk" crash, rather than admit that a nuclear weapon had accidentally fallen out of their hands.

However, the facts do not support this theory. There are no known nuclear accidents from this period, despite dozens of such incidents being declassified and now in the public record. (See List of nuclear accidents) Indeed, the U.S. had no assembled nuclear weapon in its arsenal at the time. Some also argue that it makes no sense that the military would be completely unaware of losing a nuclear weapon until a sheep rancher notified them about it.

The horrible secret experiments theory

A variation of the nuclear accident theory came out in June 2005 when UFO researcher Nick Redfern published a book called Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, [50]. Redfern's thesis is that the Roswell crash has nothing to do with aliens or Mogul balloons, but was instead the crash of an experimental spy craft hybrid involving advanced Japanese Fugo balloon technology lifting a German-based Horten flying wing glider (see also Military flying saucers) and with a captured Japanese flight crew inside the glider. The alleged experiment went awry when the glider prematurely decoupled and crashed at one site, while the lifting balloons drifted off and allegedly created the debris field at the Mack Brazel ranch site. Almost the identical theory was first presented in an article in Popular Mechanics magazine in July 1997, the 50th anniversary of the Roswell crash.

The "horrible truth" that was subsequently covered up to this day was allegedly the illegal detention and use of Japanese prisoners of war in this and other experiments, including biological weapons research, high altitude decompression tests, and radiation exposure. Genetically deformed surviving victims of criminal medical experimentation by the notorious Japanese Unit 731 were also allegedly used. Further, captured Japanese war criminal scientists were allegedly brought over and participated in these experiments, similar to the program of using captured German scientists brought to the U.S. with Operation Paperclip. Allegedly, the primary purpose of these criminal experiments was to obtain needed physiological data for the development of a Nuclear aircraft, plus other delivery systems for nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry. Redfern also contends that the U.S. government is quite content with the public believing in aliens because it is less shocking and damaging than what really happened. Allegedly other purported New Mexico flying saucer crashes were just cover stories for some of the experiments. Redfern wrote that when he contacted the U.S. Air Force, they had no comment on his theory and said they were sticking to their official Mogul balloon and crash dummy reports for explaining the Roswell incident.

Redfern bases his theory primarily on five sources, all of whom approached him, and several of whom Redfern says he knows to have been in contact with one another, raising the possibility of collusion. The main source was an unnamed colonel who provided details of the actual crash and other manned high-altitude experiments using human guinea pigs that supposedly took place from May through August 1947. Another source, an unnamed official in the British Home Office, initially approached Redfern in 1996, and also claimed that he and others were told in 1989 of the alien Roswell crash and shown the alien autopsy film (see next section) by the CIA and British Ministry of Defense in an attempt to dissuade them from pursuing their own UFO studies. But instead, they allegedly suspected the Roswell story given them was bogus and the autopsy film a fake, part of a cover story to hide criminal U.S. experiments on Japanese POWs. Even Redfern admits he initially found this source's approach, story, and willingness to publicly disclose such information suspicious.

There are also no documents to support that any such program ever existed. One of Redfern's sources claimed that all documents and photos plus bodies were destroyed to eliminate all traces of this criminal activity. Some critics of Redfern's thesis note it is almost entirely based on dubious testimony of a few people who approached Redfern, nearly all of whom admit to previous psyops/counterintelligence backgrounds, with conveniently no way to ever check their stories against official records since allegedly all such records have been destroyed.

Critics also note other problems, such as the gross mismatch between the materials described by most witnesses from the Brazel debris field — numerous, mostly small metallic pieces with anomalous properties scattered along a long linear path — and what would be expected from a balloon crash. Redfern's sources also claim that part of the flying wing craft and one of the Japanese crew were carried away with the balloons and were also found near the main debris field. Redfern states high priority was attached to recovering these and searches were initiated. Left unexplained is the seeming absence of any tracking or how searchers could have missed spotting the large, fully-exposed debris field from the air, despite over two days having elapsed from the time of the alleged disaster. Redfern attributes this to "bad luck."

Another serious objection raised was the historical fact that there were no survivors of the medical experiments of Japanese Unit 731. They were all killed to eliminate evidence when the Russians invaded China and quickly overran the Japanese positions. Hence there were no genetically deformed bodies for the U.S. to "snatch," seriously undercutting one of Redfern's key "horrible truth" arguments supposedly underlying the Roswell crash and subsequent coverup.

Nonetheless, Redfern's theory is undoubtedly provocative and has quickly gained much support inside the UFO research community along with much criticism.

The "Alien Autopsy" film

ファイル:Alien autopsy.jpg

The muscular, six-fingered being from the Ray Santilli "alien autopsy" film

→詳細は「Alien autopsy」を参照

Another twist in the Roswell story also occurred in 1995 when Ray Santilli, a British film producer, produced a film supposedly showing the autopsy of an alien from a 1947 New Mexico crash. In the U.S., portions of the film were shown on the FOX-TV network in 1996 along with some analysis by special effects experts and a pathologist.

Santilli claimed he accidentally ran into the former Army cameraman in the course of looking for archival film footage for another documentary. The crash described by Santilli's cameraman, however, does not conform to the classic Roswell crash of early July 1947 near Corona, New Mexico. Instead the cameraman was allegedly brought to the scene of the crash southwest of Socorro, New Mexico on May 30, 1947, and the autopsy depicted in the film was supposed to have been shot in Fort Worth, Texas in early July.

Skeptics argued that this film showed the alleged surgeons utterly disregarding conventional surgical and scientific procedure. Various special effects people argued that the "body" could have been easily manufactured using standard special effects techniques. For these reasons — and many others — the film was widely considered spurious both within and outside the UFO community. However, opinions of fraud were not universal among expert medical and special effects people, and nothing definitive was found in the film itself proving it a hoax. There was some testimony from others that they had seen this autopsy footage, or related footage, elsewhere before Santilli appeared on the scene. Some held out the possibility it might be a genuine autopsy of some kind.

On 4 April 2006, to coincide with the release of the film Alien Autopsy, British Sky Broadcasting broadcast a documentary, "Eamonn Investigates: Alien Autopsy" presented by Eamonn Holmes. In this programme, Santilli finally revealed the full details of the creation of the footage.

Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield now claim in 1992 that they originally saw 22 cans of film, averaging 4 minutes in length, shot in 1947 by a US Army cameraman in Roswell covering an alien autopsy. However, by the time he returned to purchase the footage two years later, the footage had degraded from humidity and heat with only a few frames staying intact. They now claim that they "restored the footage" by filming a fake autopsy on a fake alien "based upon what they saw".

A set was constructed in the living room of an empty flat in London. John Humphreys, an artist and sculptor, was employed to construct two alien bodies. In addition, Humphreys played the part of the key scientist undertaking the autopsy to allow him to control the body effects being filmed. After filming, they disposed of the bodies.

The "debris" footage of items from the crash site was also recreated by Humphreys, including the alien symbols and the six-finger control panels which Santilli admits to being "artistic license on his part". As an additional decoy, Santilli and Shoefield picked up an unidentified man on the streets in Los Angeles and filmed him in a hotel reading a statement "verifying" his identity as the original cameraman and source of the footage.

Santilli still claims that 5% of the film footage is genuine and intercut with the "recreation" though none of the contributors are able to identify which parts. However, the almost universal feeling among UFO researchers is that the entire episode is an unqualified hoax by Santilli and there never was any original film footage of an alien autopsy.

UFO Crash theories

Some UFO proponents theorize events are best explained by a mid-air collision between two alien spacecraft. The first completely fragmented and its remains were found at Mack Brazel's ranch. The second, according to witnesses and people who uphold this theory, landed a short distance away. Allegedly four extraterrestrial entities were found—one alive, one dying, and two dead and were witnessed by many people, including a university professor and his class, who were going on a field trip . Then the army came, warned the others away, and took care of the crash. Supposedly the surviving alien was christened Extraterrestrial Biological Entity 1 (EBE-1), and survived at a safe house in New Mexico until 1952, when it died of unknown causes. Most of this theory, however, is based on very dubious sources, including "documents" of highly questionable authenticity that arrived in some researchers' mailboxes.

Another theory is the craft was struck by lightning and partly exploded, creating the large debris field of small pieces found at Brazel's ranch. The rest of the crippled craft with crew came down at some other nearby location. Mack Brazel did tell his son Bill and Roswell intelligence officer Marcel that he first found the debris following a tremendous explosion he heard in the midst of a violent thunder and lightning storm. There are also other witnesses to this explosion, including some neighboring ranchers and a highly respected Roswell couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot, who reported to the local newspaper on July 8 seeing a glowing flying saucer pass overhead on the night of July 2. Marcel would later reveal in his last interview that Paul Wilmot had recently told him about his parents also seeing the craft explode in the distance after passing in the direction of Brazel's ranch to the northwest. Marcel added that Brazel came to Roswell a few days later to report the crashed flying saucer.

Regardless if this latter theory of the crash has merit, weather records do provide information on thunderstorm activity and can perhaps help pinpoint when Brazel found the debris field on his ranch. There were no thunderstorms in the region the first three weeks of June 1947, the period when the Project Mogul balloon allegedly responsible for the wreckage was launched (June 4) and when Brazel would later claim in a newspaper interview to have found the debris (June 14). However, there were thunderstorms in late June and early July, specifically July 2 and July 4. The latter dates are at least consistent with the initial Roswell base press release of July 8 that said the rancher had found the "flying disk" "sometime last week." Local ranchers have also told researchers Brazel would not leave such debris sitting in his fields for three weeks since it would have been hazardous to his livestock's health. This again suggests an early July discovery of the wreckage, alien or not.

If Roswell was indeed a crash of an extraterrestrial craft, as some continue to insist, some ufologists would argue that several things follow:

• The United States government knows that extraterrestrials have visited our planet since at least 1947 but still will not admit that fact.
• The U.S. government is currently in possession of alien technology.
• The reasons for initial government secrecy would be largely self-evident: high government officials would probably fear public panic from a potential alien threat (as happened in 1938) and there would likely be an attempt to conceal an advanced technology from the Soviets while secretly trying to reverse engineer it.

Recent developments

In 2005, researcher Nick Redfern published his theory, detailed above, of horrible military experiments involving human guinea pigs that led to the Roswell incident, and claimed this lay at the heart of the high secrecy and subsequent coverup.

Another important recent development concerns attempts to read the text on a paper held by Gen. Ramey in a photo taken with Col. Dubose and the displayed balloon debris photo above. Roswell investigator David Rudiak, as well as some other examiners of the message, claim to have identified several important phrases, including "the victims of the wreck," another referring to the crash object as "the 'disk'" (Rudiak thinks it reads "aviators in the 'disk'"). This is cited as strong evidence that the Roswell incident was actually the crash of an alien spacecraft and that bodies were indeed recovered. However, some also note that these interpretations would also be compatible with Redfern's non-alien theory of events. Rudiak also claims to have disproved the calculations done by some supporters of the Mogul balloon hypothesis that winds would have taken the purported lost balloon exactly to the Brazel ranch crash site. (See [51]). Redfern's anonymous colonel source states in Redfern's book this isn't surprising since Mogul had nothing to do with it, but served instead as a convenient cover story to the real balloon crash that had to be covered up. A different analysis of this same text, by Kevin D. Randle and James Houran, concluded that people tended to interpret the text basedon what they were told it regarded: people told it was about Roswell detected UFO references, while people told the text was about nuclear weapons tesing tended to see atom bomb references. [52]

In 2002, the Sci-Fi Channel sponsored a dig at the Brazel site in the hopes of uncovering any missed debris that the military failed to collect. Although these results have so far turned out to be negative, the University of New Mexico archeological team did verify recent soil disruption at the exact location that some witnesses said they saw a long, linear impact groove.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who headed the United States Department of Energy under President Clinton, apparently found the results provocative. In 2004, he wrote in a foreword to The Roswell Dig Diaries, that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never been adequately explained—not by independent investigators, and not by the U.S. government."

In October 2002 before airing its Roswell documentary, the Sci-Fi Channel also hosted a Washington UFO news conference. John Podesta, President Clinton's chief of staff, appeared as a member of the public relations firm hired by Sci-Fi to help get the government to open up documents on the subject. Podesta stated, "It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the true nature of the phenomena."

In an interview in September 2005, former President Bill Clinton downplayed his and his administration's interest in the Roswell incident. He said they did indeed look into it, but believes it had a rational explanation and didn't think it happened. Many in his administration thought it was a "fraud". However, he added the caveat that he could have been deceived by underlings or career bureaucrats. If that were the case, he said he wouldn't be the first American president that had been lied to or had critical information concealed from him. He also said he would be very surprised if we didn't discover other forms of life in the universe in the near future.

In November 2005 an anonymous source claiming to be part of a high level group of people within the Defense Intellegence Agency DIA of the USA, began releasing information allegedly concerning a Project Serpo. This released information allegedly confirms that in July 1947 there were two extraterrestrial disks UFO that crashed in the state of New Mexico, referenced in this article Roswell UFO incident. The Project Serpo releases further allege that there was one surviving alien entity EBE. Communication was allegedly established with this surviving EBE and its home world. The EBE lived for 5 years and died in 1952 as noted in the section above. Communications continued with the home world, allegedly in the Zeta Reticuli star system, which lead to the arrangment of an exchange program alleging to took place between 1965 to 1978. This story has been propogated widely on the internet today as Project Serpo. Project Serpo releases, documents, articles, comments and related interviews are archived at http://www.serpo.org/.

In February 2005, the ABC TV network aired a UFO special hosted by news anchor Peter Jennings. Jennings lambasted the Roswell case as a "myth" "without a shred of evidence." ABC endorsed the Air Force's explanation that the incident resulted solely from the crash of a Project Mogul balloon. Critics of the ABC segment counter that the brief treatment was one-sided and failed to consider many key pieces of evidence, such as the testimony of important witnesses like Generals Exon and Dubose or astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

In 2005, UFO and paranormal researcher Ethan A. Blight claimed to have identified several modern UFO photographs containing spacecraft of the same design as the Roswell craft.

In December 2005, a NASA spokesman changed the official position on the 1965 Kecksburg UFO incident, another alleged military UFO crash retrieval. Originally explained as a meteor fireball with nothing found, the NASA spokesman now admitted that NASA had indeed examined metal fragments that allegedly came from a "Russian satellite." Furthermore, all documentation had allegedly been "lost" in the 1990s. The new story also contradicted the previous results of a NASA expert who had conclusively ruled out a Russian or any other satellite as being involved. AP story Although not specifically about Roswell, these revelations could possibly provide insight into how the government has covered up similar incidents.

In March 2006, the Discovery Channel aired a program on Roswell produced by Dateline NBC. It presented a historical review of the case and opinions of research experts. One group argued the preponderance of evidence pointed to an alien spacecraft crash; the other argued it pointed to a Project Mogul balloon.

For many ufologists, the Roswell case is considered one of the most important UFO events and the one that started the alleged UFO cover-up, while for the skeptics it is just the most widely popularized case, not specifically notable. The official position of the United States government, as of 2005, remains that nothing of a paranormal or extraterrestrial nature had happened. The final report of the USAF regarding the Roswell case is available, as well as the answer to that report by ufologists, who insist that the report is bogus.

Cultural influence and trivia

Today, UFO tourism provides a major income for people around Roswell. The 1947 incident has been featured in many books, comics, movies and television series.

Six Days In Roswell is a semi-documentary about the city's annual festival commemorating the 50th anniversary of the incident. Featuring comedian Rich Kronfeld, the film captures the annual event's unusual atmosphere: part scientific conference, part science fiction convention and part county fair.

The novel Majestic by Whitley Strieber (1989) was a part-fact, part-fiction account of the Roswell crash which Strieber claimed was based on an inside government source.

In 1994 the TV film Roswell was made starring Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen. It featured MacLachlan as Jesse Marcel and focused on his quest to find the truth behind the Roswell story.

Roswell was produced by Paul Davids, who reports having had a classic flying saucer sighting in Los Angeles. Davids' father was one of President Bill Clinton's professors at Georgetown University in his student days. Davids said he gave Clinton a copy of the book UFO Crash at Roswell, which was the basis of the film. The book was in Clinton's personal library at the White House when it was inventoried while Clinton was being investigated by a special prosecutor.

In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men" (1995), the craft had come from the 24th century, and the aliens were the Ferengi characters Quark, Rom, and Nog. Similarly, in Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well", the characters came from the 31st century, and the captured alien was Dr. Zoidberg, and the crash debris was the dismantled body of Bender.

In 1995, the rock group the Foo Fighters came out on the Roswell record label. Dave Grohl has always had an interest in UFOs named his record label after the city. The Foo Fighters' name comes from the term used to describe a UFO during World War II. To promote 2005's In Your Honor, the band played a show at Roswell.

Hangar 18 (1980) [53] was an early movie loosely based on the Roswell story. A UFO crashed in Arizona and was hidden away at Hangar 18 in Texas. ("Hangar 18" is really supposedly at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio and allegedly where the Roswell craft and debris were also taken initially.)

In the 1996 movie Independence Day, the Roswell craft was a scout from the aliens' mother ship. The damaged craft and recovered bodies were moved to the secret base at Area 51 in Nevada for study. The craft, now flown by humans, played a key role in defeating the alien invasion.

In the 1996 movie The Rock, the FBI Director (Womack) comments that the alien crash at Roswell was one of the nation's deepest secrets along with such things as the Kennedy assassination.

In the 1996-97 TV series Dark Skies, the Roswell crash was caused by the military shooting down a flying saucer after the aliens announced their hostile intent. President Truman created the secret team Majestic 12 to counter the alien threat. The series was based on much other contemporary UFO lore and conspiracy theories, including Kennedy being assassinated for wanting to reveal the truth about Roswell and UFOs. Robert F. Kennedy was depicted as being a member of Majestic 12, as was astronomer Carl Sagan.

In the TV series 7 Days (1998-2001), technology from the Roswell crash led to a secret time-travel device.

In the 2002 TV series Taken on the Sci-Fi Channel, an Emmy-winning series on alien abductions produced by Steven Spielberg, the Roswell crash plays a central role in the story. Ironically actor Eric Close, who played the lead role in Dark Skies, now depicted an alien survivor of the Roswell crash who adopted human form and had a hybrid child with an Earth woman.

Also in 2002, the Sci-Fi Channel funded a scientific investigation at Roswell that revealed some anomalies, and collected many samples of local soil at the Brazel ranch debris field site. The program on the investigation, titled The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence, aired the same night as Taken. It also featured analysis of the message about the crash photographed in the hand of General Roger Ramey back in 1947.

Probably the most elaborate example of a Roswell-inspired TV series was titled simply Roswell. It followed the story of four alien survivors of the Roswell crash who adopt human form and live as teenagers in Roswell, one falling in love with a young human. The series ran for two seasons on the WB and a third on UPN between 1999 and 2002.

One of the executive producers and directors of Roswell was actor Jonathan Frakes, who played first officer of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Frakes had also hosted an earlier Sci-Fi special on Roswell from 1997 and another on the alien autopsy from 1996 on FOX-TV.

The X-Files made much of the Roswell incident. In some episodes, characters from the Department of Defense tried to sell the idea that it was a staged distraction, while, in others, it is said that the crash was an alien scout ship brought down by its proximity to a deposit of magnetite (and led to the alien rediscovery of the virus in a deposit of oil). In other episodes, the idea was advanced that aliens were just cover stories for genetically engineered human monsters made by the U.S. government, similar to the current theory advanced by Nick Redfern that an alien Roswell crash is just a cover story for horrible experiments on human beings in New Mexico. In at least one episode, as in other series, the Kennedy assassination was linked to the alien coverup conspiracy. The episode "The Unnatural" took place primarily in Roswell itself, telling the story of an alien bounty hunter chasing a renegade survivor of the Roswell crash, who adopted human form, joined a Roswell minor league baseball team, and became their star hitter. In another episode, the writers had some fun with the alien autopsy film and FOX TV, which did a special showing the autopsy and was the X-Files home network. Agent Fox Mulder dryly commented that the alien autopsy film shown on FOX was an "obvious fake."

In the 2005 episode of Doctor Who, Dalek, a collector of alien artifacts owns the mileometer of the ship that crashed at Roswell. He invented broadband from technology aboard the ship.

In many forms of fiction including computer and video games, the Roswell incident is often mentioned as being the source of many reverse-engineered advanced technologies. In Deus Ex, one of Area 51's engineers posits that the facility's two large-scale antimatter reactors and four small-scale cold fusion plants were derived from technology recovered from the crash. His theory is supported by the presence of odd clones which resemble greys, an image which states the cold fusion plants as having the designation "Artifact ROS172-E" (Note the ROS prefix), and the same image describing the mechanism as under study. However, other sources within the game point towards these possibly being the results of secretive research, with the alien explanation being a simple red herring.

In the DC Comics universe, the official explanation is that it was a "crashed Dominator scoutship", but this is widely discounted as being a cover story. The humorous comic book "Roswell", from Bongo Comics, had as its hero the little green man, also called Roswell, who was found in the craft.

In the Delta Green supplement for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, the crash at Roswell is depicted as a ruse by the supernatural Mi-Go monster race to influence the U.S. The monsters pretended to be aliens to trick the government into making concessions (i.e., kidnappings, murders) in exchange for supposed technological advances.

Roswell also features in the series of books The Time Machine. In book three, chapter fifteen was called "The Truth About Roswell". In it, Max goes back to 1947 and find out what happened at the time. He discovers that it was in fact a real alien spaceship that crashed, and the autopsy was also not faked. He makes it known to the public, before traveling back to his own time and finding that he has changed the world ever so slightly. One such change is that the moon landing occurred in 1964, as opposed to 1969, and that humans landed on Mars in 2007.

"The Roswell Incident" is a popular topic in the fields of techno and other electronic music. For example, The Orb's ambient house album U.F.Orb includes tracks entitled "Majestic" and "Blue Room". "Area 51" is the name of a track by British techno outfit Eat Static.

In "Morangos com Açucar"- on Potuguese television- a series of episodes where shot in Roswell, NM. The plot occurs in 2005, and a second wave of alien incidents emerges. The sons and daughters of the 1947 aliens come to Earth looking for revenge. The highlight of the series is when the Portuguese army comes to rescue the USA-army from the invasion, and kicks out the aliens out of this galaxy!

"A Real Bang-Up Job", a story by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre published in 2000, manages to explain both the Roswell UFO incident and the Tunguska event by linking them, as follows: When time travel becomes commonplace, a steady supply of time-tourists will journey yesterwards to 1947 in order to witness the Roswell event for themselves. A time-traveling criminal named Smedley Faversham is wrecking the time machines of tourists who materialize in Roswell 1947, and diverting their physical bodies to space-time coordinates in midair directly above Tunguska in 1908. Because all the abducted time travelers materialize at the same physical point in space-time, this created the massive explosion of the Tunguska event. Wreckage from the various time machines, left behind in Roswell 1947, has been misinterpreted as UFO debris. MacIntyre's story also points out the coincidence (or is it coincidence?) that the Roswell UFO incident occurred precisely ten years after the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. "A Real Bang-Up Job" is clearly offered as a joke solution to both the Roswell and Tunguska mysteries, not an ostensibly true explanation of either.

UFO Day is celebrated worldwide for the Roswell UFO incident.

Roswell International UFO Museum

The International UFO Museum & Research Center in Roswell was started in 1991 by former Roswell base public information officer Walter Haut (who in 1947 issued the flying disc press release to the local Roswell media). Up until his death in 2005, Haut had been very outspoken about Roswell being a real saucer crash and not a balloon of some kind. He also vouched for the high integrity and competency of some of the key people involved, such as Maj. Marcel and base commander Col. Blanchard, who ordered him to issue the press release. (Blanchard was a close friend.) The museum has a research library and various exhibits such as some alleged debris, allegations of the civilians being threatened by the US Army into compliance, depictions of the aliens, the UFO, etc. The "UFO Museum" is hard to miss, with its front showing a flying saucer crashing into the building.

FBI teletype

On July 8, 1947 an "urgent" teletype message was sent from the FBI office in Dallas, Texas to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and to the FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio (the closest FBI office to Wright Field). It is the only government document on the Roswell case that has ever been found or publicly released. In 1976, the document was released by the FBI through the new Freedom of Information Act, along with over 1100 others pages of UFO-related files. Previously all such files had been classified by the FBI, who had denied their existence or any interest in UFO investigation.

Major "Curtan" in the messages is a misspelling of the name of Major Edwin Kirton, one of Gen. Ramey's intelligence officers. Kirton also spoke with Reuters news agency and the Dallas Morning News and gave them somewhat different stories. For a discussion and copy of the telegram see [54]. The official copy of the telegram can be found at the FBI FOIA website.

The text of the message is:

FBI DALLAS 7-8-47 6-17 PM PMX

DIRECTOR AND SAC, CINCINNATI URGENT

FLYING DISC, INFORMATION CONCERNING. MAJOR CURTAN, HEADQUARTERS EIGHTH AIR FORCE, TELEPHONICALLY ADVISED THIS OFFICE THAT AN OBJECT PURPORTING TO BE A FLYING DISC WAS RECOVERED NEAR ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO, THIS DATE. THE DISC IS HEXAGONAL IN SHAPE AND WAS SUSPENDED FROM A BALLON [sic] BY CABLE, WHICH BALLON [sic] WAS APPROXIMATELY TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER. MAJOR CURTAN FURTHER ADVISED THAT THE OBJECT FOUND RESEMBLES A HIGH ALTITUDE WEATHER BALLOON WITH A RADAR REFLECTOR, BUT THAT TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION BETWEEN THEIR OFFICE AND WRIGHT FIELD HAD NOT XXXXXXXXXXX BORNE OUT THIS BELIEF. DISC AND BALLOON BEING TRANSPORTED TO WRIGHT FIELD BY SPECIAL PLANE FOR EXAMINATIO[N.] INFORMATION PROVIDED THIS OFFICE BECAUSE OF NATIONAL INTEREST IN CASE XXXX AND FACT THAT NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AND OTHERS ATTEMPTING TO BREAK STORY OF LOCATION OF DISC TODAY. MAJOR CURTAN ADVISED WOULD REQUEST WRIGHT FIELD TO ADVISE CINCINNATI OFFICE RESULTS OF EXAMINATION. NO FURTHER INVESTIGATION BEING CONDUCTED.

WYLY

END

Excerpts from newspaper account of Brazel's find

Brazel related that on June 14 he and an 8-year old son, Vernon, were about 7 or 8 miles from the ranch house of the J. B. Foster ranch, which he operates, when they came upon a large area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks. At the time Brazel was in a hurry to get his round made and he did not pay much attention to it. But he did remark about what he had seen and on July 4 he, his wife, Vernon and a daughter, Betty, age 14, went back to the spot and gathered up quite a bit of the debris.

The next day he first heard about the flying disks, and he wondered if what he had found might be the remnants of one of these.

Monday he came to town to sell some wool and while here he went to see sheriff George Wilcox and "whispered kinda confidential like" that he might have found a flying disk.

Wilcox got in touch with the Roswell Air Field and Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a man in plain clothes accompanied him home, where they picked up the rest of the pieces of the "disk" and went to his home to try to reconstruct it.

[The material] ...might have been as large as a table top. The balloon which held it up, if that is how it worked, must have been about 12 feet long, he felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. There was no sign of any metal in the area which night have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind. Although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No string or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.

Brazel said that he had previously found two weather balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these. "I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon," he said. "But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it." full text, AP story of interview, & Brazel photo taken by AP at press conference

Sources (generally "pro-UFO" explanations)

• Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, The Roswell Incident, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980
• Jerome Clark, Unexplained! 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena, Visible Ink Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8103-9436-7
• Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmidtt, UFO Crash at Roswell, Avon Books, 1991
• Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmidtt, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Avon Books, 1994
• Kevin D. Randle, Roswell UFO Crash Update, Global Communications, 1995
• Kevin D. Randle, The Roswell Encycylopedia, Quill/HarperCollins, 2000
• Stanton T. Friedman and Don Berliner, Crash at Corona, Marlowe & Co., 1992
• Stanton T. Friedman, Top Secret/Majic, Marlowe & Co., 1996
• Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle, Beyond Roswell: the alien autopsy film, area 51, and the U.S. government coverup of UFO's, Marlowe & Company, 1997
• Tim Shawcross, The Roswell File, Motorbooks International, 1997, ISBN 0-7603-471-8 (more neutral in tone)
• Thomas R. Morris & Theresa J. Morris, with Sally Hester "Roswell Connection", 2006

Further reading (debunkery)

• Col. Richard Waver and Lt. James McAndrew, The Roswell Report: Fact Vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, 1995, U. S. Government Printing Office, ISBN 0-16-048023-X or ISBN 0-7881-4661-0. (Weaver and McAndrew are both officers in the Air Force counterintelligence branch, Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Weaver is known to have taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.)
• Capt. James McAndrew, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, Barnes & Noble, 1997, ISBN 0-7607-0814-2 (Also published by the U. S. Government Printing Office, June 1997)
• Karl T. Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, Prometheus Books, 2003, ISBN 1-57392-894-1 (Probably most comprehensive and best-researched of the debunkery books with many affidavits, interview with Jesse Marcel, FBI telegram, United Press Roswell teletypes. Note: Pflock has a CIA background and was once involved in a cattle mutilation hoax.)
• Kal K. Korff, The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know, Prometheus Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57392-127-0. Dell (Random House) paperback : ISBN 0-440-23613-4
• Philip J. Klass, The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup, Prometheus Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57392-164-5
• Kendrick Frazier, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell (editors), The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups, Prometheus Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57392-131-9 (Has nine chapters on the Roswell incident.)
• Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994, ISBN 1-56098-343-4 (Has some discussion of the Roswell incident.)
• Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler, Charles B. Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth, 1997, Smithsonian Institution Press, ISBN 1-56098-751-0 (Academically-oriented, sociological debunkery of Roswell case; chapter by former Mogul engineer Charles Moore on Mogul balloon trajectory calculation to Mack Brazel ranch is contended to be a hoax.[55])

1947 newspaper articles and press bulletins

• Comprehensive collection, summary, and analysis of several dozen local, regional, national, and international press articles
• Discussion and links to several dozen more 1947 press articles of military saucer debunkery campaign following Roswell
• ABC News radio broadcast, July 8, 1947, audio and transcript
• Mack Brazel's press interview, Associated Press and Roswell Daily Record versions includes photo of Brazel
• RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region, Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947. Text and comparison to AP and UP announcements of base press release
• Full text of AP and UP versions of base press release plus analysis

See also

• List of major UFO sightings

External links

• "The Roswell Incident" Documents, Timeline, Air Force reports, Witness List.
• 1994 USAF Executive Summary of their first Roswell report, The Roswell Report Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert
• Mogul balloon synopsis from Air Force report
• USAF Executive Summaries of 1994 and 1997 reports
• Link to GAO report
• Complete 1995 Air Force Roswell report, mostly old Project Mogul files, 1000+ pages (very long download)
• An answer to the Case Closed statement Criticism of the 1997 USAF "Case Closed" or "crash dummy" report, from Dr. Mark Rodeghier, director of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.
• Criticism of the Air Force Roswell reports from Roswell researcher Stanton T. Friedman
• Sci Fi network website on Roswell incident; includes lengthy summary of case by researchers Tom Carey and Don Schmitt.
• Roswell researcher Dennis Balthaser's website; includes some witness interviews, FOIA information requests, Roswell summary, and more.
• Critical review of Redfern's "horrible experiments" theory from OVNI Global UFO Network; excellent research.
• History of Roswell for July 1947
• Entry of the Rotten Library about Roswell (skeptical look at both sides)
• The Skeptic's Dictionary entry for Roswell (debunkery with many links to other debunking articles and books)
• Skeptical Inquirer article on Mogul explanation (skeptical)
• Debunkery of the Ramey message
• www.ufocasebook.com:Search:Roswell UFO Incident

Alternative, fringe viewpoints

• "Roswell Incident Update"; Different angle from someone claiming to be there
• Roswell and PAPERCLIP; From a Christian site against the UFO phenomenon.
• The "E.T. Myth" Vs. The "Nazi Legend": An Examination of Some MJ-12 Documents; Project Paperclip and Nazi flying saucer theories from alternative energy enthusiast Joseph P. Farrell's book Reich of the Black Sun: Nazi Secret Weapons & Cold War Allied Legend