11
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Roswell
The Smoking Gun
The Roswell incident probably would have quickly slipped into the realm of UFO cases that only hardcore UFOlogists study, if not for the alleged recovery of alien bodies. Unfortunately, the importance of this case—in the context of understanding the UFO phenomena—has been buried under that very sensational, single, overhyped aspect.
Who does not know about Roswell today? The name is now synonymous with the UFO phenomenon.
Fig. 11.1. Front-page article about the flying saucer of Roswell
First, in order to put this case in its proper context, it is important to get some background about the history, development, and testing of the atomic bomb during World War II.
It all zeroes in on one state: New Mexico.
In 1942, New Mexico was a little known, largely empty, sparsely populated state that only those born in the Southwest knew anything about. The Navajo, Zuni, and other Native American tribes lived in the northern plateaus, called mesas, as they do today. The southern desert country was largely uninhabited.
The fairly small, quiet town of Los Alamos is situated in northern New Mexico. It was virtually unknown in 1943, when the government hurriedly constructed buildings to house those serving in the top-secret Manhattan Project, which would eventually succeed in designing and manufacturing the first atomic bombs.
Why Los Alamos? Having determined the need for a centralized lab to conduct research in secret, General Leslie Groves of the Army Corp of Engineers wanted an isolated location for safety and to keep the scientists (the “brain trust”) away from the prying media and curious populace. He reasoned that the lab should be at least two hundred miles from international boundaries and west of the Mississippi River.
Army Major John Dudley suggested Oak City, Utah, or Jemez Springs, New Mexico, but both were rejected. The Manhattan Project scientific director, J. Robert Oppenhemier, had spent a lot of time in his younger days in the northern New Mexico area, and he suggested the Los Alamos Ranch School on the mesa, and as soon as Groves saw it, he agreed.1
During the Manhattan Project, the Los Alamos site hosted thousands of employees, including many Nobel Prize–winning scientists. The location was a total secret. The lab’s only mailing address was a P. O. box (number 1663) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Though its contract with the University of California was initially intended to be temporary, the relationship was maintained long after the war.
The nature of the research was so carefully guarded that until the atomic bombs landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, University of California president Robert Sproul had no idea what the purpose of the lab was.
The only member of the University of California administration who knew the lab’s true purpose—actually, the only one who knew its exact location—was Secretary-Treasurer Robert Underhill, who was in charge of wartime contracts and liabilities.
Work at the lab began in 1943 and culminated in the creation of several atomic bombs, one of which was used in the first nuclear test, near Alamogordo, New Mexico; code named Trinity, it was detonated on July 16, 1945. Thereby was the atomic age ushered in, all on the soil of one largely uninhabited state.
The White Sands Proving Ground, near Alamogordo, sits almost due south of Los Alamos in the south-central part of the state, in an isolated, desert locale. Roswell lies to the northeast of Alamogordo and the southeast of Los Alamos. A few hundred miles separate all of these locations.
Soon after the bombs were developed, tested, and used to end the war, UFOs of various descriptions began appearing over the skies of New Mexico.
With the historical background and geographical data in place, we have a context ready for the Roswell incident to be placed within.
Roswell is a small farming town in eastern New Mexico, as noted, slightly north and east of Alamogordo. In 1947, not long after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, Roswell was the home of the 509th Bombardment Group, stationed at Roswell Army Air Field. At that time, the 509th was the only atomic-bomb squadron in the world.
Other than perhaps a few small underlying jitters elicited by some of the top secret “nuke” operations conducted by the army at the Roswell base, the town was as relaxed as any other rural, largely agricultural community in the country. The civilian residents had their lives and work to do, and the military had theirs. In many ways, their lives were intertwined to the benefit of both sides.
The nukes had forced Japan to surrender (supposedly), and with the war over, Roswell was settling down into its normal prewar, peacetime routines.
That all changed the morning of July 8, 1947, when the citizens, civilian, and military alike woke up to the following article in the Roswell Daily Record:
Roswell Daily Record
JULY 8, 1947
RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION
The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer.
According to information released by the department, over authority of Maj. J. A. Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff Geo. Wilcox here, that he had found the instrument on his premises.
Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk, it was stated.
After the intelligence officer here had inspected the instrument it was flown to higher headquarters.
The intelligence officer stated that no details of the saucer’s construction or its appearance had been revealed.
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who saw what they thought was a flying disk.
They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. last Wednesday night at about ten o’clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed.
Wilmot called Mrs. Wilmot’s attention to it and both ran down into the yard to watch. It was insight less than a minute, perhaps 40or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated.
Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500 feet high and going fast. He estimated between 400 and 500 miles per hour.
In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like two old type washbowls placed together in the same fashion. The entire body glowed as though light were showing through from inside, though not like it would be if a light were underneath.
From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked to be about5 feet in size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must have been 15 to20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess.
Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs. Wilmot said she heard a swishing sound for a very short time.
The object came into view from the southeast and disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity of six mile hill.
Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about it. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen.2
Imagine waking up, slapping some cold water on your face, putting a pot of coffee on, filling a bowl with some Cheerios, and settling down to read the morning paper—only to be confronted with that improbable headline.
After that morning, neither Roswell nor the world would ever be the same. The story rocketed around the globe. The problem with the article was that while it suggested much, it revealed very few details, raising far more questions than it answered.
What really happened? Well, therein lies the rub.
Investigators came up with different conclusions more than thirty years after the event, and by then it was a very cold case. Three books were written by UFOlogists from 1980 to 1993. (We shall review them later in this chapter.)
First, the Wilmots witnessed the UFO’s flight pattern, as was described in the article on July 8. They did so on July 2. All ensuing investigations agreed that the couple were beyond reproach, both being model citizens.
They claimed to have seen a UFO overhead, and we have no cause to doubt it. Mr. Wilmot gave a basic but good working description of it, and their testimony begins the Roswell story.
What about the rest of it?
During the first week of July, Mac Brazel, a local ranch manager, was riding with one of his children out to do a morning check on his sheep after a night of intense thunderstorms. This is typical stuff for a Western rancher. While scouting around, he ran into a curious pile of unusual debris apparently caused by a crash.
He noticed that something had hollowed out a shallow gouge several hundred feet long and that the debris was scattered over a large area.
He investigated the debris and noted that it had several strange physical properties. He decided to take a few samples—a large one he stored in a shed and a smaller piece to show his neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor. After doing that, Brazel drove into Roswell and contacted the sheriff, George Wilcox.
Brazel was a typical no-nonsense, down-to-earth ranch hand and manager, not the kind of guy who sits on a hill waiting for a UFO to arrive and take him to a distant, utopian planet.
Following an eyewitness-testimony and chain-of-evidence approach, we find (1) on July 2, the Wilmots observed a UFO flying overhead; (2) on July 4, Brazel discovered strange debris scattered about, apparently caused by a crash landing that had gouged out a stretch of ground several hundred feet in length; (3) Brazel took samples of the debris, stored one larger sheet, and and showed a smaller sample to his neighbors; and (4) he then drove into town and notified the sheriff of his discovery.
On July 1 and 2, military radar and eyewitnesses had spotted fast-moving objects in the sky; this had actually become fairly commonplace from Los Alamos, in the far northern part of the state, to Alamogordo and the Roswell area, in the south-central southeastern parts. Most investigators claim that the crash took place on July 2. Brazel did not find the site until the fourth, and as soon as he did events moved extremely fast.
However, the July 2 date for the Wilmot sighting is a little suspicious; it seems possible that the date for the crash could have been third or fourth of July, when a violent thunderstorm hit the area. It has been speculated, quite logically, that the UFO was hit by a lightning strike, though this is not being claimed to be factual and must remain in the domain of speculation. The exact date is not as important as the incident itself.
A further point that needs clarification: the crash site Brazel discovered was actually midway between the towns of Corona and Roswell. Both towns are about seventy-five miles away from the site. The case is commonly called “the Roswell incident” because the debris and alleged alien bodies were taken to the Roswell Army Air Field.
Those are the facts as reported by the Wilmots and Brazel, and later confirmed by Brazel’s children, the Proctors, and Wilcox.
Next, Wilcox notified authorities at Roswell Army Air Field. Following that, he took several deputies and went to the Foster ranch, which Brazel managed, to investigate the debris.
The air field’s intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel, was dispatched to the site to conduct the initial investigation after the sheriff notified the authorities at the base. All who try to dismiss the Roswell case out of hand without thinking the facts and details through on a deep level should consider the following carefully.
Marcel was the intelligence officer of an elite atomic bomb group, the only one in the world. In addition, he was a career military officer and highly trained in his field. He would never have jeopardized his reputation and good standing by mistaking shards from an alleged air balloon for the debris of an extraterrestrial craft. He carefully examined the debris material and determined that it was not of this earth.
When he investigated the site, Marcel picked up pieces of the wreckage and noted that they were extremely light and very thin. Years later, when he decided to make his role in the Roswell case known to the public, Marcel stated, “It was not a weather balloon, nor was it an airplane or a missile.” Of the character of the debris, he noted: “So, I tried to bend the stuff. It wouldn’t bend.”3
In other words, he stuck to his original findings, which formed the basis of the initial newspaper article.
After concluding his investigation, Marcel had the debris removed and transported to the Roswell base. The only people that were witness to the crash site and the debris were the Brazels, Wilcox and his deputies, Marcel, and the army mop-up detail.
Those are the key witnesses, and other than the military, only Brazel carried off some pieces of evidence, which his friends also examined. The main bulk of the evidence was hauled off by the mop-up detail and transported to the Roswell Army Air Field.
Thus far this is a simple, straightforward series of events, or so it seems on the surface anyway.
Now at this juncture we should pose a question: If the debris was nothing more than the remains of a shredded balloon (the final official report), why did the military take the time and expense to quickly ship it, via B-29 and C54 aircraft, to Texas, and then to the Army Air Force’s Wright Field in Ohio?
If one accepts the balloon premise, then this question needs to be addressed. A shredded balloon would neither command any attention nor would it be shipped to distant military bases for follow-up examinations and storage. That logical supposition is simple and obvious.
Nonetheless, not long after Marcel had the material transported to Roswell, he got orders to ship it out to Fort Worth, Texas. Now we have to add another link in the chain of evidence: from the Brazel ranch, to Roswell Air Field, and then to Fort Worth.
If the debris pile was something other than a balloon, something that needed more examination because, as Brazel and Marcel suggested, it possessed unusual properties, then the scenario makes sense. Not only would the shipment to Wright Field be needed, so would the initial press release, which was obviously based on the conclusions of Marcel’s investigation.
But no sooner had the Roswell Daily Record published an article based on the first press release than the editor received a follow-up release that was issued by General Roger Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force, Fort Worth Army Air Field.
The first story was rescinded, and the blame was pinned on Marcel, who had mistakenly misidentified a weather balloon and its reflector for the wreckage of a “crashed disk,” according to Ramey.
We are faced with an either-or choice because both versions cannot be true. How do we decide which one is real and which not?
The first press release was issued by Colonel William Blanchard, commander of the Roswell base. He trusted his intelligence officer to effectively handle his duties, and he examined the debris as well.
If Marcel had somehow failed to notice that the debris was really that of a balloon at the site, he certainly would have known for sure by the time it was taken to the base and shown to his commander.
MAJOR MARCEL AND COLONEL BLANCHARD
Coincidentally, it was reported that the day after the first and second press releases, Blanchard and his wife went on leave and left the Roswell area to go on a vacation (which was not completely true). So he was out of the loop and not available to respond to any questions that the second press release raised with the very fascinated and pestering mass media.
Given that the balloon scenario pins the blame for this whole fiasco on Marcel, we would naturally assume that such flagrant incompetence would hurt his future career. Wrong. Marcel continued with his duties and actually rose in rank to become a distinguished colonel. That simply does not pass the smell test.
It is these kinds of seemingly insignificant details that raise red flags that often add up and, taken together, point to the underlying truth. An officer does not get promoted to high levels of rank for being an incompetent fool who causes the Army Air Force (and the military in general) vast public embarrassment. Clearly, the army never considered Marcel to be either incompetent or foolish.
The same is true of Blanchard. If he had just rubber-stamped Marcel’s report and also showed himself to be an incompetent fool, his career, too, would have been truncated. However, he also went on to eventually be promoted to a four-star general rank, the highest peacetime rank.
For a moment, let us consider the military career of then major Jesse Marcel up to the time of the Roswell incident.
He joined the army during World War II and performed well in intelligence school, so well that after his graduation he was assigned to be an instructor at the school. After a period of serving in that capacity, he requested a combat post, and the army granted it. In October 1943, First Lieutenant Marcel was assigned to the 5th Bomber Command in the Southwest Pacific theater.
For the next two years, he fought in the Pacific theater, initially as a squadron intelligence officer, and then as a group intelligence officer.
Marcel participated in several campaigns that were pivotal in retaking the Philippine Islands from the Japanese. During his combat tour, Marcel consistently showed that he was a stellar, highly competent officer. His commanders recognized his efforts by rewarding him with two Air Medals, the Bronze Star, a promotion to captain, and then one to major, in May 1945.
Does this sound like the type of man who would not be able to distinguish between the debris of a balloon and a UFO? I am not one to overlook these kinds of details because establishing credibility is of paramount concern in any UFO case. Marcel was not a sloppy, reckless investigator.
More proof? When Roswell was all over, he was transferred to the Strategic Air Command, where he was eventually put in charge of a Pentagon briefing room for the Air Force Office of Atomic Energy. There his responsibilities were to make sure that materials (charts, illustrations, and so forth) were ready on schedule for the chiefs of staff and to maintain the organization of the briefing room.
If Marcel concluded that the debris was not of this earth, I am convinced that he knew whereof he was speaking. If Marcel said that, following the second press release, he was under orders to never speak openly about what he had investigated at the crash site, rest assured, that was the case.
If any skeptics doubt that and would rather cast aspersions on his character, then give a reasonable explanation of why he would lie, based on his known character and military record.
In the end, the truth behind the Roswell incident can only be uncovered by establishing who might have lied and why he, she, or they felt compelled to do so. Remember, it is an either-or choice—a balloon or a UFO. The issue really revolves around who or what you believe: Marcel or Ramey, the first press release or the second. Marcel was an intelligence officer, which I clearly state; he did the on-site investigation and wrote up a report that was used for the first press release. Blanchard authorized the publication of that first press release. Ramey was at another base and above them in rank.
(Interestingly, Ramey, the point man in this case, will reappear in this book to debunk another major UFO case from five years later, which we shall go over in chapter 12.)
Let’s delve further into the evidence. Returning first to the article based on the original press release that appeared in the Roswell Daily Record, we find an account given by the Wilmots, who said that prior to the press release being issued, they observed a disk flying northwest on July 2 (perhaps on the fourth), which Mr. Wilmot estimated to be fifteen to twenty feet in diameter. At the time they reported their sighting, the UFO crash story had not been published.
Later Brazel (and other citizens) reported that they had heard a loud explosion the night that the Wilmots observed the craft.
The object that the Wilmots observed and described in no way resembled a balloon. It was flying in the direction of the crash site. Their sighting and the subsequent explosion that was heard suggest the crash occurred on the second or third of July.*2
Brazel found the debris field and showed some debris to the Proctors, and all agreed it was unlike anything they had ever seen. Then Brazel took his sample into Roswell, where he showed it to Sheriff Wilcox. The sheriff, in turn, called the base and reported Brazel’s discovery to Major Marcel. The major then drove to the sheriff ’s office and inspected the sample. This all took place on July 6.
Marcel informed Blanchard, who ordered him to get someone from the Counter Intelligence Corps, proceed to the crash site with Brazel, and retrieve as much of the wreckage as possible. Shortly thereafter, the Military Police (MPs) showed up at the sheriff ’s office and confiscated Brazel’s sample. (That accounts for what happened to that piece of the wreckage evidence.)
The MPs delivered that sample to Blanchard’s office; it appeared that time was of the essence because the sample was immediately flown to the 8th Air Force Headquarters in Fort Worth and from there to Washington, D.C. In the meantime, Marcel accompanied Brazel to his car, and they headed to the debris field. Along the way, they stopped to examine the large sheet of debris that Brazel had stored in the shed.
On July 7, Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt (the Counter Intelligence Corps investigator), dressed in civilian clothes, collected material from the debris field. Once they had filled the latter’s car, Marcel told him to return to the base and said that he would continue to collect more pieces of debris, and then return to Roswell.
Finishing the job of filling up his own car, Marcel headed back to town, stopping at his home along the way. Marcel then showed his wife and son, Jesse Jr., some of the pieces he had collected and demonstrated the strange properties they possessed to his family.
About 4:00 p.m. that afternoon, a radio broadcaster at station KSWS began relaying a story (then unconfirmed) about a crashed flying saucer over the teletype machine. However, the message never got through because the FBI intercepted the transmission and demanded that she squelch the story or the station would face consequences.
Next, at 11:00 a.m. on July 8, Blanchard dictated the initial press release to First Lieutenant Walter Haut, the base’s public information officer.
Haut immediately headed into town to deliver the release to the radio stations and newspapers. The first station was KGEL; he handed it to Frank Joyce.
At noon, the release hit the Associated Press news wire service.
Then the first flight in from Washington, D.C., arrived at the base, carrying a special team of photographers and Warrant Officer Robert Thomas. They were dispatched to Roswell by the Pentagon.
By this time, the army was already posting guards at all the roads that led to the Foster ranch (the crash site). When William Woody and his father, who had also witnessed the Wilmot sighting, tried to drive in that direction, MPs turned them back.
The response to the Associated Press wire release quickly overwhelmed the phone lines at the base, the local radio stations, and the newspapers; all were jammed up within hours.
Wilcox dispatched two deputies to the debris field for a second time, but MPs turned them back. Brazel was flown back to the debris field from the base. The impact site was observed from the air.
Base personnel told inquiring reporters that Blanchard had gone on leave; however, he actually went to the debris site.
Like Marcel, Blanchard was neither naive nor foolish. He verified Marcel’s conclusions before issuing that press release. In addition, if Blanchard had committed any kind of incompetent blunder, could he have gone on to attain the highest peacetime rank the U.S. military offers, that of four-star general? No.
Why would the air force reward two officers for committing a monumental and quite embarrassing blunder?
The press release that Blanchard issued based on Marcel’s assessment was accurate; the Roswell wreckage was of extraterrestrial origin. The retraction and subsequent replacement of a crashed UFO with a balloon was a cover story, pure and simple.
(But this assessment is as yet premature; I shall substantiate it much more before giving a final conclusion.)
Now the case was simple and straightforward when the first press release was issued. However, it soon got complicated when the evidence was shipped from Roswell to Texas. Then it got even more complex when the second press release fully retracted the information presented in the first one.
The case steadily grew in complexity when the planes arrived from Washington, D.C., and the ranch was cordoned off by the MPs. If, as Ramey insisted, there was nothing to look at but the pieces of a crashed balloon, why did a special team arrive from Washington to investigate the site? Furthermore, since a wrecked balloon is hardly a matter of national security, why post a military perimeter around the crash site?
As soon as Ramey invoked his “smoke-and-mirrors strategy,” the case erupted with contradictions and absurdities.
All this, and I have yet to drag the poor, diminutive humanoids that were allegedly killed in the crash into the picture. Too much information too soon can overwhelm the analytical process. Roswell has too many witnesses, not too few; too much evidence, not too little; and too many years have passed since the incident occurred. It is, therefore, easy to get lost in the mass of complications and conflicting details.
STAYING FOCUSED ON THE SMOKING GUN
Just remember the initial press release and the early eyewitness reports, as well as the hands that held the evidence and how that evidence was transferred and to whom.
I am not presenting this case to try to prove that a UFO containing four aliens crashed near Roswell, a UFO that the U.S. government recovered and has kept hidden ever since. All I am really focusing on is the veracity of the first press release, the mass of evidence that supports its authenticity, and the reality it described.
With the general facts and general chronology, as well as the firsthand witnesses established, it is now time to add a higher resolution, and more details, to the picture.
Bessie Brazel was with her father when they discovered the debris at the crash site. She later gave this report:
There were 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.4
Mac Brazel passed away in 1963, long before UFO investigators started interviewing Roswell witnesses. However, he did give an inter view to a Roswell Daily Record reporter at the time of the event; when asked about the debris he said that it was “bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.”5
Marcel did not speak publicly about his investigations until 1978, thirty-one years after they took place. When asked about the debris he gave the following response:
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.
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.”6
Clearly, the testimony from all three of the first eyewitnesses to inspect the debris at the site is in agreement as to its peculiar characteristics. In addition to these primary witnesses, their family members also had the chance to inspect the material that composed the debris. Brazel’s son said that some of it was like balsa wood, only harder, and that he tried but was unable to scratch it.
Marcel had shown his son some of the debris material after he had filled his car with it and then returned to Roswell that night. His son, Jesse Jr. (who became a medical doctor), has given the following description:
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.7
Also, Marcel claimed that, as ordered by Blanchard, he had been accompanied to the debris site by Cavitt. However, when Cavitt was interviewed by an air force investigator during hearings in 1992 to establish whether there had been a cover-up, Cavitt claimed that he could not recall meeting Marcel.
However, Cavitt did admit to inspecting the debris at the crash site with his assistant, Sergeant Lewis Rickett. The air force investigator then questioned Rickett.
Rickett said Cavitt took him to a debris area the following day. He described an extensive cleanup of a large area involving many men, heavily guarded by MPs. He was allowed to handle a remaining piece of debris.
There was a slightly curved piece of metal, real light.
You could bend it but couldn’t crease it.
It was about six inches by twelve or fourteen inches. Very light. I crouched down and tried to snap it. My boss [Cavitt] laughs and said, “Smart guy. He’s trying to do what we couldn’t do.”
I asked, “What in the hell is this stuff made out of?”
It didn’t feel like plastic and I never saw a piece of metal this thin that you couldn’t break. This was the strangest material we had ever seen . . . there was talk about it not being from Earth.8
The above are the known, identified, first, and therefore primary group of eyewitnesses to have touched and inspected the “unknown” material. Most were also the first to visit and inspect the site with the debris still present.
All the eyewitness testimony was in agreement about the nature of the unique material. Clearly, it was not the stuff balloons are made of.
Now there are also numerous secondary witness reports to consider:
Sergeant Robert Porter was a B-29 flight engineer. Porter helped load and then boarded the B-29 that flew from Roswell to Fort Worth, where Marcel was supposed to show some recovered material to General Ramey before proceeding on to Wright Field in Ohio. Porter told investigators:
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 2½ 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.9
Sergeant Robert Smith, of the 1st Air Transport Unit at Roswell, said:
My involvement in the Roswell incident was to help load crates of debris on to the aircraft. . . . There was a lot of farm dirt on the hangar floor. . . . We loaded crates on to three or four C-54s. . . . One crate took up the entire plane; it wasn’t that heavy, but it was a large volume. . . . All I saw was a little piece of material. The piece of debris I saw was two-to-three inches square. It was jagged. When you crumpled it up, it then laid back out; and when it did, it kind of crackled, making a sound like cellophane, and it crackled when it was let out. There were no creases. . . . The largest piece was roughly 20 feet long; four-to-five feet high, four-to-five feet wide. The rest were two-to-three feet long, two feet square or smaller.10
Lieutenant Robert Shirkey, the base’s assistant operations officer, also witnessed debris being loaded onto the B-29. He said:
Standing only three feet from the passing procession, we saw boxes full of aluminum-looking metal pieces being carried to the B-29; Major Marcel came along carrying an open box full of what seemed to be scrap-metal. It obviously was not aluminum: it did not shine nor reflect like the aluminum on American military airplanes. And sticking up in one corner of the box being 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. . . . A man in civilian dress . . . was carrying a piece of metal under his left arm. . . . This piece was about the size of a poster drawing board—very smooth, almost glass-like, with torn edges.11
The above statements from supporting witnesses corroborate the observations of Marcel and the others and also establish that the material was not a mere balloon, since it was mysterious enough to transport it, posthaste, to military bases in Texas; Washington, D.C.; and Ohio.
If it had been a typical balloon, then would it have not been a lot cheaper and much less time consuming to simply have one team of forensic experts come to Roswell to definitively identify it?
But no, that debris was of such a unique character—and of such import to the Pentagon—that access to the crash site had to be blocked off by MPs, the first press release retracted, the debris material transported expeditiously to one, and then another distant military post, and a team dispatched from Washington to Roswell. One must logically ask, Why all the fuss over a few scraps of a crashed balloon?
In fact, as far as the objective of this book is concerned, the preponderance of evidence weighs heavily on the side of the first press release being the accurate and authentic one. That is really all I need to support the Genesis Race hypothesis.
One lone artifact, one piece of unknown metal associated with a crashed UFO, is enough to add yet another piece of evidence to the mounting ancient and modern compilation.
However, though this chapter could end here and be a satisfactory inclusion supporting the overall hypothesis of the book, there are reasons to extend the examination. Many UFO investigators, including the scientists behind the French COMETA Report from 1999, have serious misgivings about the way the U.S. government handled (and still handles) the Roswell incident.
Their concerns go beyond the cover-up aspect to much deeper and more disturbing scenarios. What if the cover-up was created to keep a very important strategy hidden for decades, at least, if not for good?
Is it possible that the U.S. Air Force recovered a UFO, reverse engineered its technology, and then developed whole new technologies from what they learned? Could this be why America has been the world’s leader in military, scientific, and technological fields, in an ever-accelerating manner, since the early 1950s?
One method that can be used to attempt to answer these questions is examining any evidence that suggests the level of importance that the U.S. government placed on the Roswell crash materials. That includes any extreme measures taken to silence or coerce witness into changing their original testimonies.
We know that Marcel was ordered to Fort Worth to show Ramey recovered crash materials. Why did Ramey need Marcel to accompany the materials, since the second press release, which debunked Marcel’s initial statement, had already been issued?
Marcel later addressed this question, explaining that in one interview conducted in Texas, under the direction of Ramey, a photo was taken of him with the real debris, but then everything was removed and other material from a balloon was then substituted for subsequent press photos.
The stuff in that one photo was pieces of the actual stuff we had found. It was not a staged photo. Later, they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. They then allowed more photos. Those photos were taken while the actual wreckage was on its way to Wright Field.12
The issue always comes to the question of why, if Ramey had already determined the material was that of a crashed balloon, would it need to be analyzed at several different bases? In fact, why not just hold a press conference at Roswell, let journalists examine and touch it, and then dispose of it? Logically, that would have been the case if the material had been from a balloon.
Brigadier General Thomas Dubose, chief of staff to Ramey, later confirmed Marcel’s account, writing in a signed 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.”13
We can use this complex transportation of the evidence as one gauge of the importance that the U.S. government put on the material, which was justified in Ramey’s mind, anyway; it had to be kept secret. The decision to rescind the first press release and replace it with a radically revised version is another indication, and placing a no-entry perimeter around the crash site yet another.
Entirely removing the debris as expeditiously and quietly as possible is another. These are not run-of-the-mill operations that the U.S. military routinely uses on American soil.
All of these actions suggest that the Roswell debris material held a high value in the minds of the upper echelon in Washington, D.C.
Another way of measuring the value of the debris material is to assess the tactics used, if any, to silence or coerce witnesses to either stay quiet or to retract or publicly revise their stories to conform to the official version. Is there any evidence these tactics were used?
Decades after the incident, Marcel revealed that he had been ordered not to speak openly about his original findings; in the military, violating that kind of order is tantamount to career-ending suicide.
When it came time to pose with the balloon material, Marcel did. In fact, he went along with the program like a dutiful soldier and was later promoted. But after decades of keeping silent, he finally decided to tell all. By then he had been out of the military for some time.
Now one thing has probably become apparent to you, dear readers, and that is my apparent failure to include the discovery of diminutive alien bodies at the crash site. Why have they been left out?
The first press release did not refer to any alien bodies, just a crashed flying saucer. Brazel did not mention them, nor did Marcel, though both discussed finding and examining the strange material at the debris site. None of the primary eyewitnesses referred to seeing alien bodies at the crash site on Foster’s ranch.
The only mystery that the initial Roswell press release raised was that of the discovery of a crashed alien spacecraft. At the time, that was all that the media were focused on. The hubbub quickly died down when Ramey gave the (hopefully) reassuring order to rescind the initial press release not long after the first one had stirred the pot.
In fact, back in that era, in July 1947, Roswell was a blip on the mass media radarscope; however, that blip soon disappeared. Most journalists and members of the public were satisfied with the army’s weather balloon explanation. The perception of the media or the public did not change for decades.
The incident was forgotten, like the Battle over Los Angeles had been.
The Roswell case, in general—and the discovery of alien bodies—did not become the source of controversy and public debate until several UFO researchers, in 1978, more than thirty years after the event, brought it back up.
THE ROSWELL BOOKS
In the late 1970s, Stanton T. Friedman, a physicist and UFOlogist, interviewed Marcel about what he found at the debris site. Marcel expressed his belief that the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft.
Marcel’s story spread through UFO circles, being featured in some UFO documentaries at the time. That generated a small wave of interest. Then, in February 1980, the National Enquirer interviewed Marcel and published his account; that vaulted Roswell back into the national and worldwide spotlight.
Additional witnesses confirmed Marcel’s claims, and they added significant new details as well. These included claims of a large-scale military operation taking place, which was mobilized for the recovery of (1) the alien craft, and (2) alien bodies at different crash sites.
By this point in time, Roswell was not only a cold case, it was an iceberg. As I noted previously, the preponderance of the evidence available to examine at the time of the event was enough to conclude that an alien craft had crashed and been recovered.
The problem at that time was that virtually everyone outside of the civilians and the military personnel who were eyewitnesses to the event accepted the official explanation. So there were no inquiries and examinations conducted by credentialed investigative reporters.
That said, while the information contained in the first press release is consistent with the body of evidence that surrounds the event (i.e., a crashed UFO was recovered), nothing in it alludes to alien bodies, nor does the established body of direct and strong circumstantial evidence. This is problematic.
Having witnesses step forward to give accounts after decades have passed opens the door for critics to totally dismiss the case.
For example: In 1989, former Roswell mortician Glenn Dennis made a detailed personal account of what had occurred. Dennis made the startling claim that alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base during the crash site flap.
Did he claim to have actually seen these alien corpses? No.
Dennis presented unverifiable circumstantial evidence to support his claim. He said that the base had contacted him and ordered four child-size coffins.
The next day, his curiosity got the best of him, and he went to the base to try to find out what was going on. However, he was summarily ordered to leave the facility. Prior to departing, he had a brief encounter with an unidentified nurse who spoke of strange odors and mysterious events that sounded like an autopsy was being performed.
This may sound like evidence, but is it? Dennis was not an actual eyewitness to an autopsy. The four coffins, in and of themselves, do not prove anything. The mysterious nurse, without a name, apparently vanished and was never located. So Dennis is a less than stellar witness.
The military did not have a difficult time disposing of the belated accounts that claimed the army had recovered alien bodies along with a crashed UFO.
In the concluding portion of a report released in 1997, they contended that the accounts of recovered alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, innocently transformed memories of the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Project High Dive, which was conducted in the 1950s, and hoaxes perpetrated by various witnesses and UFO proponents.
The psychological effects of time compression and confusion about when events occurred explained the discrepancies with the years in question. This and other such reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible.
It is not hard to raise doubts about the veracity of accounts given by even highly credible witnesses when so much time had elapsed, and all the air force had to do was to raise plausible doubts.
However, had at least a few of the witnesses stepped forward at the time of the event and said they had seen alien bodies at the site, being removed from the site, or being transported from one base to another, the situation would have been much different. But that did not happen.
I can understand the reluctance of military personnel to go public while on active duty. That could end up with court martial proceedings and a less than honorable discharge. Such is not the case for civilian witnesses like Dennis, however.
Part of the difficulty of the belated research that attempted to link the July 8 press release to the recovery of dead aliens is that it blurred together the Foster ranch site and several other sites. As has been made crystal clear, the contents of the July 8 press release only referenced the debris site that Brazel had discovered and Marcel had investigated.
The first reference to alien bodies appeared in a 1980 book, The Roswell Incident, written by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore. The book introduced an account by a Barney Barnett, who had died years earlier. Friends said he had on numerous occasions described the crash of a flying saucer and the recovery of alien corpses in the Socorro area (not Foster’s ranch), about 150 miles (240 kilometers) west of the Foster ranch.
A second-hand account, given by friends, of events that Barnett may or may not have experienced and described is not good evidence. The book then describes a complicated story that includes Barnett and a mysterious group of archaeologists, who just happened to be there on the same day, and the military, who also showed up on time to lead them away from the crashed UFO they had allegedly all stumbled across on the same day.14
Personally, having conducted investigations into people and events that determined important legal outcomes, I would not even consider including this information as part of the Roswell case. The informant, Barnett, was dead when the research was conducted. No questions could be asked of him.
The book’s authors even went so far as to construct a crash scenario that included various sites and ended up with the collected debris going to Muroc Army Airfield (now Edwards Air Force Base) in California.
What did that have to do with Roswell? Nothing?
To say that The Roswell Incident was flawed is being kind. It not only removes the reader from the actual evidence and the importance of the first news release and the debris, it also dallies off to distant sites with all sorts of loose speculations.
Along the way, a dead eyewitness is introduced as well as an unknown group of archaeologists, who supposedly get spirited away from a crash site by the MPs. All this has zip to do with Roswell. In fact, it has the smell of subtle disinformation designed to divert attention away from the real events.
Of course, none of those alleged events can be authenticated in any way. If the aliens were homicide victims, no detective could use that drivel as any level of evidence.
Another decade passed before the next book, UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, was published, in 1991.15 The authors performed far more due diligence as concerns fact checking than their predecessors. Little attention, except in passing, was made of the claim found in The Roswell Incident that the aliens and their craft were shipped to Muroc Army Airfield.
The book showed a chain of events, with the alien corpses seen at a crash site, shipped to the Roswell base, as reported by Dennis, then flown to Fort Worth and finally to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, the last known location of the alleged bodies.
The problem here is that, as noted previously, Dennis is not a “smoking gun” eyewitness. How can he be used as a credible witness of an autopsy he never observed? Unfortunately, using Dennis as the key witness to the alleged alien bodies and autopsy would come to grief for the authors.
In 2010, Discover magazine published an article by a trained investigative reporter into the allegations that the authors made about the “missing” nurse. Dennis claimed that while he was at the base trying to find out what was going on, he ran into a nurse (name withheld) who gave him information. He then goes on to claim that she disappeared after that exchange.
The trained investigative reporter did not ask, What happened to the missing nurse, and can I find her? (The authors had used this approach.) He asked, Did this alleged nurse exist, and can I find her name in base personnel records?
Those are very different questions that lead to two widely divergent paths of investigation. Investigative reporters are on deadline, and time is their most precious commodity, so they know how to ask the right questions.
The reporter quickly located the five nurses that Randle and Schmitt claimed they had exhaustively searched for in vain. But he could not find any trace of Nurse X, who had allegedly talked to Dennis. (Dennis finally released her name to Randle.)
The question that I want answered is simple: Where were these alleged alien bodies found, and who claimed to have actually seen them? With the original Roswell incident, we know where the debris field was. We know the eyewitnesses who examined it. We know the chain of evidence and how it flowed from the debris site to Roswell, then to Texas, and finally to Wright Field.
But we do not know where these supposed alien bodies came from. Who found them?
As far as I am concerned, the alleged dead witness and the unidentified group of “archaeologists” are out of the picture (pure conjecture at best).
In another book, Crash at Corona by Stanton T. Friedman and Don Berliner, published in 1992, the authors suggested a high-level cover-up based on documents they obtained—the infamous Majestic 12 archive.16 These documents were anonymously dropped off at a UFO researcher’s house (how convenient) in 1984 and were purported to be part of some 1952 briefing papers for incoming president Dwight Eisenhower.
At this point, we are hit by a whole new body of alleged documentation, obtained most unusually, that describes a high-level top-secret government agency. It sounds like the premise for a Hollywood spy thriller. Apparently, the agency’s purpose was to investigate aliens recovered at Roswell and to keep that information concealed from public scrutiny.
Friedman had done a lot of the background research for The Roswell Incident, with Moore; and Crash at Corona simply built on that research. The title shifts the focus to Corona instead of Roswell, because Corona is closer to the Foster ranch crash site.
The chronology is largely the same as that offered in The Roswell Incident, and it includes Marcel and Cavitt, the counterintelligence agent, who was likely the “man in plain clothes” described by Brazel in 1947, visiting the ranch on Sunday, July 6.
The book claims that Brazel was “taken into custody for about a week” and escorted into the offices of the Roswell Daily Record on July 10, where he gave the account he was told to give by the government.
Friedman and Berliner included the Barnett account about the Socorro crash, and then went on to introduce a new eyewitness statement regarding the site. The next supposed eyewitness testimony came from a Gerald Anderson, who provided vivid descriptions of both a downed alien craft and four aliens.
The authors noted that much of their evidence had been rejected without a solid basis by Randle and Schmitt when they were writing UFO Crash at Roswell and that “a personality conflict between Anderson and Randle” meant that Friedman was the author who investigated his claim.
Friedman and Berliner’s book, however, largely embraced the sequence of events from UFO Crash at Roswell, where aliens are seen at the Roswell Army Air Field, based on the Dennis account, and then shipped off to Fort Worth and after that to Wright Field.
The above books form the body of evidence presented to the public regarding the 1947 Roswell press release, which did not mention dead aliens. There would not be any Roswell Incident or any Crash at Corona without that press release.
Though the aforementioned books differ in many details, these last two agree on the general chronology of events and on one crucial detail: the dead aliens and their alleged autopsies rest on the credibility of the account of one person—Glenn Dennis.17
In my estimation, his testimony is not that of a credible eyewitness. He was a young man when it happened. He speculated about the four coffins but never actually saw anything (much less an autopsy). That story was supposed to have originated from a mystery nurse who does not appear to have ever served at the Roswell base.
What the introduction of the “dead aliens” did was (1) boost book sales, and (2) undermine the evidence that there was a real, and more important, cover-up of the extraterrestrial debris material, which was swept away by the sensationalism posed by four dead aliens being recovered and autopsied.
CONCLUSION
Following the detonation of the first atomic bomb, UFOs began to appear in the skies over New Mexico more frequently. At least one crashed near Roswell on the Foster ranch. A local ranch hand discovered the debris and reported his find to the sheriff. In turn, the sheriff informed the intelligence officer at the Roswell base. He investigated the material and concluded that it was “not of this earth.”
The intelligence officer’s findings resulted in a press release being issued on July 8, 1947. However, upon reflection, the higher echelon of the military retracted that release and claimed that the debris was that of an ordinary weather balloon. The evidence suggests that the second press release was a cover story aimed at concealing the truth from the public for reasons not yet established.