Coordinates: 
33.97°N 105.24°W
The
Roswell UFO incident took place in the U.S. in June or July 1947, when an airborne object crashed on a
ranch near
Roswell, New Mexico.
Explanations of what took place are based on both official and
unofficial communications. Although the crash is attributed to a secret
U.S. military Air Force surveillance balloon by the U.S. government,
[1] the most famous explanation of what occurred is that the object was a
spacecraft containing
extraterrestrial life. Since the late 1970s, the Roswell incident has been the subject of much controversy, and
conspiracy theories have arisen about the event.
The
United States Armed Forces
maintains that what was recovered near Roswell was debris from the
crash of an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to
what was then a classified (top secret) program named
Mogul. In contrast, many
UFO
proponents maintain that an alien craft was found, its occupants were
captured, and that the military engaged in a massive cover-up. The
Roswell incident has turned into a widely known
pop culture
phenomenon, making the name "Roswell" synonymous with UFOs. Roswell has
become the most publicized of all alleged UFO incidents.
On July 8, 1947, the
Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF)
public information officer Walter Haut, issued a
press release stating that personnel from the field's
509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disk", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell. Later that day, the press reported that
Commanding General of the
Eighth Air Force Roger Ramey had stated that a
weather balloon was recovered by the RAAF personnel. A
press conference
was held, featuring debris (foil, rubber and wood) said to be from the
crashed object, which seemed to confirm its description as a weather
balloon.
Subsequently the incident faded from the attention of UFO researchers for over 30 years. In 1978, physicist and
ufologist Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel
who was involved with the original recovery of the debris in 1947.
Marcel expressed his belief that the military covered up the recovery of
an alien spacecraft. His story spread through UFO circles, being
featured in some UFO documentaries at the time. In February 1980, the
National Enquirer
ran its own interview with Marcel, garnering national and worldwide
attention for the Roswell incident. Additional witnesses added
significant new details, including claims of a large-scale
military operation
dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many
as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former
mortician Glenn Dennis put forth a detailed personal account, wherein he claimed
alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base.
In response to these reports, and after
United States congressional inquiries, the
General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the
United States Secretary of the Air Force
to conduct an internal investigation. The result was summarized in two
reports. The first, released in 1995, concluded that the reported
recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from
Project Mogul.
The second report, released in 1997, concluded reports 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
Operation High Dive
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 discrepancy with the
years in question. These reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as
being either
disinformation
or simply implausible. But at the same time, several high-profile UFO
researchers discounted the possibility that the incident had anything to
do with aliens.
Contemporary accounts
On June 14, 1947, William Brazel, a
foreman working on the Foster homestead, noticed strange clusters of debris approximately 30 miles (50 km) north of
Roswell, New Mexico.
This date—or "about three weeks" before July 8—appeared in later
stories featuring Brazel, but the initial press release from the
Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) said the find was "sometime last week," suggesting Brazel found the debris in early July.
[2] Brazel told the
Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks."
[3] He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife and daughter to gather up the material.
[4]
Some accounts have described Brazel as having gathered some of the
material earlier, rolling it together and stashing it under some brush.
[5] The next day, Brazel heard reports about "flying discs" and wondered if that was what he had picked up.
[4] On July 7, Brazel saw Sheriff Wilcox and "whispered kinda confidential like" that he may have found a flying disc.
[4] Another account quotes Wilcox as saying Brazel reported the object on July 6.
[2]
Wilcox called RAAF Major Jesse Marcel and a "man in plainclothes"
accompanied Brazel back to the ranch where more pieces were picked up.
"[We] spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon [July 7] looking for any
more parts of the weather device", said Marcel. "We found a few more
patches of tinfoil and rubber."
[6]
As described in the July 9, 1947 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.[7]
A
telex sent to an
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office from the
Fort Worth, Texas office quoted a Major from the Eighth Air Force (also based in Fort Worth at
Carswell Air Force Base) on July 8, 1947 as saying that "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 advices
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."
[8]
Early on Tuesday, July 8, the RAAF issued a press release, which was immediately picked up by numerous news outlets:
[9]
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 sheriff's 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.[10]
Colonel
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
Fort Worth Army Air Field. At the base,
Warrant Officer Irving Newton confirmed Ramey’s preliminary opinion, identifying the object as being a weather balloon and its "kite,"
[5]
a nickname for a radar reflector used to track the balloons from the
ground. Another news release was issued, this time from the Fort Worth
base, describing the object as being a "weather balloon".
Witnesses
Witness accounts, emergence of alien narratives
In 1978, nuclear physicist and author
Stanton T. Friedman
interviewed Jesse Marcel, the only person known to have accompanied the
Roswell debris from where it was recovered to Fort Worth where
reporters saw material which was claimed to be part of the recovered
object. The accounts given by Friedman and others in the following years
elevated Roswell from a forgotten incident to perhaps the most famous
UFO case of all time.
[11] By the early 1990s, UFO researchers such as Friedman,
William Moore,
Karl T. Pflock, and the team of
Kevin D. Randle
and Donald R. Schmitt interviewed several hundred people who had—or
claimed to have had—a connection with the events at Roswell in 1947.
[12] Additionally, hundreds of documents were obtained via
Freedom of Information Act requests, and some were supposedly leaked by insiders, such as the so-called
Majestic 12 papers.
[13]
Their conclusions were at least one alien craft had crashed in the
Roswell vicinity, aliens—some possibly still alive—were recovered, and a
massive cover-up of any knowledge of the incident was put in place.
[11]
Over the years, books, articles, television specials, and a made-for-TV movie brought the 1947 incident significant notoriety.
[11] By the mid-1990s, public polls such as a 1997
CNN/
Time
poll, revealed that the majority of people interviewed believed that
aliens had indeed visited Earth, and that aliens had landed at Roswell,
but that all the relevant information was being kept secret by the US
government.
[14]
Various narratives evolved, starting with Friedman's 1978 interviews
with Marcel, through publication of the first book on Roswell in 1980,
to new accounts and new books appearing into the early 1990s. Many new
witnesses had by then emerged, as had new accounts that detailed
recoveries of alien corpses and alien autopsies.
[11] Skeptics such as
Phillip Klass
and Richard Todd published objections to the plausibility of these
accounts, but it was not until 1994 and the publication of the first
United States Air Force report on the incident, that a strong counter-argument to the presence of aliens was widely publicized.
[11]
Various authors enumerated different alien scenarios which often
contradicted each other, based on what the documentary evidence
suggested and on which witness accounts were accepted or dismissed. This
was especially true for the various claimed sites for the crash and
recovery sites of alien craft (various authors had different witnesses
who described different locations for these events).
[11]
The outline from
UFO Crash at Roswell (1991) by Randle and Schmitt is common to many of these accounts:
A UFO crashed northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of
1947. The military acted quickly and efficiently to recover the debris
after its existence was reported by a ranch hand. The debris, unlike
anything these highly trained men had ever seen, was flown without delay
to at least three government installations. A cover story was concocted
to explain away the debris and the flurry of activity. It was explained
that a weather balloon, one with a new radiosonde target device, had
been found and temporarily confused the personnel of the 509th Bomb
Group. Government officials took reporters' notes from their desks and
warned a radio reporter not to play a recorded interview with the ranch
hand. The men who took part in the recovery were told never to talk
about the incident. And with a whimper, not a bang, the Roswell event
faded quickly from public view and press scrutiny.[15]
The Roswell Incident (1980)
The first book on the Roswell UFO incident was
The Roswell Incident (1980) by
Charles Berlitz
and William Moore. The authors claimed to have interviewed over ninety
witnesses. Though he was uncredited, Friedman carried out some research
for the book.
[16] The Roswell Incident featured accounts of debris described by Marcel as "nothing made on this earth."
[17] Additional accounts by Bill Brazel,
[18] son of Mac Brazel, neighbor Floyd Proctor
[19] and Walt Whitman Jr.,
[20]
son of newsman W. E. Whitman who had interviewed Mac Brazel, suggested
the material Marcel recovered had super-strength not associated with a
weather balloon. The book introduced the contention that debris which
was recovered by Marcel at the Foster ranch, visible in photographs
showing Marcel posing with the debris, was substituted for debris from a
weather device as part of a cover-up.
[21][22]
The book also claimed that the debris recovered from the ranch was not
permitted a close inspection by the press. The efforts by the military
were described as being intended to discredit and "counteract the
growing hysteria towards flying saucers".
[23] Two accounts
[24] of witness intimidation were included in the book, including the incarceration of Mac Brazel.
[25]
The book included a report of Roswell residents Dan Wilmot and his
wife seeing "two inverted saucers faced mouth to mouth" passing overhead
on July 2,
[26] as were other reports of mysterious objects seen flying overhead.
[27] The Roswell Incident introduced an alien account by
Socorro, New Mexico
resident Barney Barnett, who had died years earlier. Friends of Barnett
said he described the crash of a flying saucer and the recovery of
alien corpses in the vicinity of Socorro, about 150 miles (240 km) west
of the Foster ranch. He and a group of
archaeologists stumbled upon an alien craft, and its occupants on the morning of July 3, only to be led away by military personnel.
[28] Further accounts suggested that the aliens and the craft were transported to
Edwards Air Force Base in
California.
[29]
The book suggested that either there were two crafts that crashed, or
that debris from the vehicle Barnett described had subsequently landed
on the Foster ranch after an explosion.
[28]
Marcel said he "heard about it on July 7"
[30]
when the sheriff Brazel had called him, but said, "[On] Sunday, July 6,
Brazel decided he had better go into town and report this to someone,"
and that Brazel in turn called Marcel, suggesting—though not stating
that Marcel was contacted on July 6.
[31] In 1947, Marcel was quoted as saying that he visited the ranch on Monday, July 7.
[6]
Marcel described returning to Roswell the evening of July 7 to find
that news of the incident had been leaked. Calls were made to Marcel's
house, and he had a visit from a reporter, but he would not confirm the
reports to the press. "The next morning, that written press release went
out, and after that things really hit the fan."
[32]
The book suggested that the military orchestrated Brazel's testimony in
order to make it appear that a mundane object had crash landed on the
ranch. "Brazel [...] [went] to great pains to tell the newspaper people
exactly what the Air Force had instructed him to say regarding how he
had come to discover the wreckage and what it looked like [...]".
[33]
UFO Crash at Roswell (1991)
In 1991, with the benefit of publicity from new witness interviews, Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt published
UFO Crash at Roswell.
In this account, the timelines of the incident were slightly altered.
The date when Brazel reported the debris and Marcel went to the ranch
was said to be Sunday, July 6, not the next day, as some of the original
accounts suggested, and
The Roswell Incident left unclear.
Marcel and an unidentified counter-intelligence agent were said to have
spent the night at the ranch. The two gathered material on Monday, then
Marcel supposedly dropped by his house on the way to the Roswell base in
the early hours of Tuesday, July 8.
[34]
Some new details emerged, including accounts of a "gouge [...] that extended four or five hundred feet" at the ranch
[35] and descriptions of an elaborate cordon and recovery operation. Several witnesses in
The Roswell Incident described being turned back from the Foster ranch by armed military police, but extensive descriptions were not given.
[citation needed] The Barnett accounts were mentioned, though the dates and locations were changed from the accounts found in
The Roswell Incident.
In the new account, Brazel was described as leading the Army to a
second crash site on the ranch, at which point the Army personnel were
supposedly "horrified to find civilians [including Barnett] there
already."
[36]
Glenn Dennis had emerged as an important witness in 1989, after calling the hotline when an episode of
Unsolved Mysteries featured the Roswell incident. His descriptions of
Roswell alien autopsies were the first account that said there were alien corpses at the Roswell Army Air Base.
[11] No mention, except in passing, was made of the claim found in
The Roswell Incident
that the Roswell aliens and the craft were shipped to Edwards Air Force
Base. The 1991 book seemed to establish a chain of events with alien
corpses being seen at a crash site, the bodies then being shipped to the
Roswell base as witnessed by Dennis, and then flown to Fort Worth, and
finally to
Wright Field in
Dayton, Ohio, the last known location of the bodies.
[citation needed]
The book introduced an account from General Arthur E. Exon, an
officer stationed at the alleged final resting place of the recovered
material. He stated there was a shadowy group, which he called the
"Unholy Thirteen", who controlled and had access to whatever was
recovered.
[37] He later stated:
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. [...] [U]ntil the
original thirteen died off and I don't think anyone is going to release
anything [until] the last one's gone.[38]
Crash at Corona (1992)
In 1992, a third book,
Crash at Corona, was published. Written
by Friedman and Don Berliner, it suggested a high-level cover-up of a
UFO recovery, based on documents which were anonymously dropped off at a
UFO researcher's house in 1984. The documents were purported to be 1952
briefing papers for incoming president
Dwight Eisenhower,
describing a high-level government agency whose purpose was to
investigate aliens recovered at Roswell and to keep such information
hidden from public view. Friedman had done much of the research for
The Roswell Incident with William Moore, and
Crash at Corona built on this research.
The title of the book was
Corona, New Mexico rather than Roswell, New Mexico, because Corona is geographically closer to the Foster ranch crash site.
[39]
The timeline of events that the book gives is the same as the previous
account, with Marcel and Sheridan Cavitt, a counter-intelligence agent
who was likely the "man in plainclothes" described by Brazel in 1947,
visiting the ranch on July 6. The 1992 book says, however, 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 an account that he had been told to give by the government.
[40]
A sign of the disagreements between various researchers is evident,
as Friedman and Berliner moved the Barnett account back to near Socorro
and introduced a new eyewitness account of the site. This new account is
from Gerald Anderson who provided vivid descriptions of both a downed
alien craft and four aliens, of which at least one was alive.
[41] The authors note much of the evidence had been dismissed by the authors of
UFO Crash at Roswell and that this had been done "without a solid basis".
[42]
The 1992 authors also mention "a personality conflict between Anderson
and Randle" meaning that Friedman was the author who investigated his
claim.
[43] The book, however, does largely embrace the same sequence of events as the account in
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 subsequently to
Wright Field. The book suggests that as many as eight alien corpses were
recovered from two crash sites: three dead and perhaps one alive from
the Foster ranch, and three dead and one living from the Socorro site.
[44]
The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell (1994)
In 1994, Randle and Schmitt published
The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell.
While it restated a majority of the case as laid out in their earlier
book, new and expanded accounts of aliens were included, and a new
location for the recovery of aliens was detailed. Additionally, an
almost completely new scenario for the sequence of events was laid out.
For the first time, the airborne object was said to have crashed on the
evening of July 4 instead of July 2, which was the date used in all the
previous books. Another important difference was the assertion that the
alien recovery was well under way before Brazel traveled to Roswell with
his news about the debris on the Foster ranch. Apparently several
objects had been tracked by radar for a few days in the vicinity before
one crashed. In all previous accounts, the military was made aware of
the alleged alien crash only when Brazel came forward. Additionally,
Brazel was said to have given his news conference on July 9, and the
1994 book claims that his press conference and the initial news release
announcing the discovery of a "flying disk" were all part of an
elaborate ruse to shift attention away from the "true" crash site.
[citation needed]
The book featured a new witness account describing an alien craft and aliens from Jim Ragsdale,
[who?]
at a new location north of Roswell, instead of closer to Corona on the
Foster ranch. Corroboration was given by accounts from a group of
archaeologists. Five alien corpses were supposedly seen.
[45]
The book states that although the Foster ranch was also a source of
debris, no bodies were recovered from it. The book also features
expanded accounts from Dennis and Kaufmann, and a new account from Ruben
Anaya which describes New Mexico Lieutenant Governor
Joseph Montoya's claim that he saw alien corpses at the Roswell base.
[citation needed]
More disagreement between Roswell researchers forms part of the book.
A full chapter is devoted to dismissing the Barnett and Anderson
accounts from Socorro, a central part of
Crash at Corona and
The Roswell Incident. "[...] Barnett's story [and] the Plains [of San Augustin, near Soccoro] scenario, must be discarded", say the authors.
[46] An appendix is devoted to describing Majestic 12 as a hoax.
[47]
The two Randle and Schmitt books remain highly influential in the UFO
community; their interviews and conclusions widely reproduced on
websites.
[48]
Randle and Schmitt claimed to have "conducted more than two thousand
interviews with more than five hundred people" during their Roswell
investigations.
[38]
By 1994 when
The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell was published, a schism had emerged within the UFO community about the events in the Roswell UFO incident.
[49] The
Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the
Mutual UFO Network
(MUFON), two leading UFO societies, disagreed in their views of the
various scenarios presented by Randle–Schmitt and Friedman–Berliner;
several conferences were held to try to resolve the differences. One of
the center issues under discussion was where Barnett was when he saw the
alien craft he was said to have encountered. A 1992 UFO conference
attempted to achieve a consensus among the various scenarios portrayed
in
Crash at Corona and
UFO Crash at Roswell, however, the publication of
The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell
had "resolved" the Barnett problem by simply ignoring Barnett and
citing a new location for the alien craft recovery, including a new
group of archaeologists not connected to the ones the Barnett story
cited.
[49]
In 1995, film footage purporting to show an
alien autopsy and claimed to have been taken by a US military official shortly after the Roswell incident was released by
Ray Santilli,
a London-based video entrepreneur. The footage caused an international
sensation when it aired on television networks around the world.
In 2006, Santilli admitted that the film was mostly a reconstruction,
but continued to claim it was based on genuine footage now lost, and
some original frames that had survived. A fictionalized version of the
creation of the footage and its release was retold in the comedy film
Alien Autopsy (2006).
[50][51]
Air Force and skeptics respond
Air Force reports
During the mid-1990s, the
United States Air Force
issued two reports which accounted for the debris that was found and
reported on in 1947, and which also accounted for the later reports of
alien recoveries. The USAF reports identified the debris as coming from a
top-secret government experiment called
Project Mogul, which tested the feasibility of detecting
Soviet nuclear tests and
ballistic missiles
with equipment that was carried aloft using high-altitude balloons.
Accounts of aliens were explained as resulting from misidentified
military experiments that used anthropomorphic dummies, accidents
involving injured or killed military personnel, and hoaxes perpetrated
by various witnesses and UFO proponents.
[citation needed]
The Air Force report formed a basis for a skeptical response to the
claims many authors were making about the recovery of aliens, though
skeptical researchers such as
Philip J. Klass
and Robert Todd had already been publishing articles for several years
that raised significant doubts about the accounts of aliens in the
incident.
Books published into the 1990s suggested there was much more to the
Roswell incident than the mere recovery of a weather balloon, however,
skeptics, and even some
social anthropologists[52]
saw the increasingly elaborate accounts as evidence of a myth being
constructed. After the release of the Air Force reports, several books,
such as Kal Korff's
The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You To Know
(1997), built on the evidence presented in the reports to conclude
"there is no credible evidence that the remains of an extraterrestrial
spacecraft was involved."
[12]
Problems with witness accounts
Hundreds of people were interviewed by the various researchers, but
critics point out that only a few of these people claimed to have seen
debris or aliens. Most witnesses were repeating the claims of others,
and their testimony would be considered hearsay in an American court of
law and therefore inadmissible as evidence. Of the 90 people claimed to
have been interviewed for
The Roswell Incident, the testimony of
only 25 appears in the book, and only seven of these people saw the
debris. Of these, five handled the debris.
[53] Pflock, in
Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe (2001), makes a similar point about Randle and Schmitt's
UFO Crash at Roswell.
Approximately 271 people are listed in the book who were "contacted and
interviewed" for the book, and this number does not include those who
chose to remain anonymous, meaning more than 300 witnesses were
interviewed, a figure Pflock said the authors frequently cited.
[54]
Of these 300-plus individuals, only 41 can be "considered genuine
first- or second-hand witnesses to the events in and around Roswell or
at the Fort Worth Army Air Field," and only 23 can be "reasonably
thought to have seen physical evidence, debris recovered from the Foster
Ranch." Of these, only seven have asserted anything suggestive of
otherworldly origins for the debris.
[54]
As for the accounts from those who claimed to have seen aliens,
critics identified problems ranging from the reliability of second-hand
accounts, to credibility problems with witnesses making demonstrably
false claims, or multiple, contradictory accounts, to dubious death-bed
confessions or accounts from elderly and easily confused witnesses.
[55][56][57]
Pflock noted that only four people with supposed firsthand knowledge of
alien bodies were interviewed and identified by Roswell authors: Frank
Kaufmann; Jim Ragsdale; Lt. Col. Albert Lovejoy Duran; Gerald Anderson.
[58] Duran is mentioned in a brief footnote in
The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell
and never again, while the other three all have serious credibility
problems. A problem with all the accounts, charge critics, is they all
came about a minimum of 31 years after the events in question, and in
many cases were recounted more than 40 years after the fact. Not only
are memories this old of dubious reliability, they were also subject to
contamination from other accounts the interviewees may have been exposed
to.
[11]
The shifting claims of Jesse Marcel, whose suspicion that what he
recovered in 1947 was "not of this world" sparked interest in the
incident in the first place, cast serious doubt on the reliability of
what he claimed to be true.
In
The Roswell Incident, Marcel stated, "Actually, this material may have
looked
like tinfoil and balsa wood, but the resemblance ended there [...] They
took one picture of me on the floor holding up some of the
less-interesting metallic debris [...] The stuff in that one photo was
pieces of the actual stuff we found. It was not a staged photo."
[59]
Timothy Printy points out that the material Marcel positively
identified as being part of what he recovered is material that skeptics
and UFO advocates agree is debris from a balloon device.
[8] After that fact was pointed out to him, Marcel changed his story to say that that material was not what he recovered.
[8]
Skeptics like Robert Todd argued that Marcel had a history of
embellishment and exaggeration, such as claiming to have been a pilot
and having received five Air Medals for shooting down enemy planes,
claims that were all found to be false, and skeptics feel that his
evolving Roswell story was simply another instance of this tendency to
fabricate.
[60]
Contradictory conclusions, questionable research, Roswell as a myth
Critics
[who?]
also point out that the large variety of claimed crash flights suggests
that events that spanned years have been incorporated into one single
event,
[11] and that authors
[who?]
have uncritically embraced anything that suggests aliens, even when the
accounts contradict each other. Pflock said, "[T]he case for Roswell is
a classic example of the triumph of quantity over quality. The
advocates of the crashed-saucer tale [...] simply shovel everything that
seems to support their view into the box marked 'Evidence' and say,
'See? Look at all this stuff. We must be right.' Never mind the
contradictions. Never mind the lack of independent supporting fact.
Never mind the blatant absurdities."
[61]
Korff suggests there are clear incentives for some people to promote
the idea of aliens at Roswell, and that many researchers were not doing
competent work: "[The] UFO field is comprised of people who are willing
to take advantage of the gullibility of others, especially the paying
public. Let's not pull any punches here: The Roswell UFO myth has been
very good business for UFO groups, publishers, for Hollywood, the town
of Roswell, the media, and UFOlogy [...] [The] number of researchers who
employ science and its disciplined methodology is appallingly small."
[62]
Gildenberg and others
[who?] said there were as many as 11 reported alien recovery sites
[11]
and these recoveries bore only a marginal resemblance to the event as
initially reported in 1947, or as recounted later by the initial
witnesses. Some of these new accounts could have been confused accounts
of the several known recoveries of injured and dead servicemen from four
military plane crashes that occurred in the area from 1948 to 1950.
[63] Other accounts could have been based on memories of recoveries of
test dummies,
as suggested by the Air Force in their reports. Charles Ziegler argued
that the Roswell story has all the hallmarks of a traditional folk
narrative. He identified six distinct narratives, and a process of
transmission via storytellers with a core story that was created from
various witness accounts, and was then shaped and molded by those who
carry on the UFO community's tradition. Other "witnesses" were then
sought out to expand the core narrative, with those who give accounts
not in line with the core beliefs being repudiated or simply omitted by
the "gatekeepers."
[64][65] Others then retold the narrative in its new form. This whole process would repeat over time.
Roswellian Syndrome
Prominent skeptics
Joe Nickell and co-author James McGaha identified the myth-making process, which they called the "Roswellian Syndrome".
[66]
The authors used the Roswell event as an example, but pointed out that
the same syndrome is readily observable in other reported
UFO incidents. The authors identified five distinct stages of development of the Roswell myth:
Incident: The initial incident and reporting on July 8, 1947
Debunking: Soon after the initial reports, the mysterious
object was identified as a weather balloon, later confirmed to be a
balloon array from
Project Mogul which had gone missing in flight.
Submergence: The news story ended with the identification of
the weather balloon. However, the event lingered on in the ‘fading and
recreative memories of some of those involved’. Rumor and speculation
simmered just below the surface in Roswell and became part of the
culture at large. In time,
UFOlogists
arrived, asked leading questions, and helped to spin a tale of crashed
flying saucers and a government conspiracy to cover up the true nature
of the event.
Mythologizing: After the story submerged, and, over time,
reemerged, it developed into an ever-expanding and elaborate myth. The
mythologizing process included exaggeration, faulty memory, folklore and
deliberate hoaxing. The deliberate hoaxing was usually self-serving for
personal gain or promotion (for example, the promotion of the 1950
sci-fi movie
The Flying Saucer) and in turn fed the folklore.
Reemergence and Media Bandwagon Effect: Publication of books such as
The Roswell Incident by
Berlitz
and Moore in 1980, television shows and other media coverage
perpetuated the UFO crash story and cover-up conspiracy beliefs.
Conspiracy beliefs typically mirror public sentiments towards the US
government and oscillate along with those attitudes.
The authors predicted that the Roswellian Syndrome would "play out again and again",
[66] not only in the Roswell story, but also in other UFO and conspiracy-theory stories.
Developments since 1990s
Pro-UFO advocates dismiss Roswell incident
One of the immediate outcomes of the Air Force reports on the Roswell
UFO incident was the decision by some prominent UFO researchers to view
the Roswell incident as not involving an alien craft. While the initial
Air Force report was a chief reason for this, another reason was the
release of secret documents from 1948 that showed that top Air Force
officials did not know what the UFO objects being reported in the media
were, and their suspicion that the UFOs might be Soviet spy vehicles.
In January 1997, Karl T. Pflock, one of the more prominent pro-UFO
researchers, said “Based on my research and that of others, I'm as
certain as it's possible to be without absolute proof that no flying
saucer or saucers crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell or on the
Plains of San Agustin in 1947. The debris found by Mac Brazel...was the
remains of something very earthly, all but certainly something from the
Top Secret Project Mogul....The formerly highly classified record of
correspondence and discussions among top Air Force officials who were
responsible for cracking the flying saucer mystery from the mid-1940s
through the early 1950s makes it crystal clear that they didn't have any
crashed saucer wreckage or bodies of saucer crews, but they were
desperate to have such evidence [...]"
[67]
Kent Jeffrey, who organized petitions to ask President
Bill Clinton to issue an
Executive order
to declassify any government information on the Roswell incident,
similarly concluded that no aliens were likely to have been involved.
[68][69]
William L. Moore, one of the earliest proponents of the Roswell
incident as a UFO event, said this in 1997: "After deep and careful
consideration of recent developments concerning Roswell...I am no longer
of the opinion that the extraterrestrial explanation is the best
explanation for this event." Moore was co-author of the first book on
Roswell,
The Roswell Incident.
[70]
In a podcast interview with Canadian filmmaker
Paul Kimball
released on August 25, 2013, Kevin Randle stated that while he still
personally believed that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed in New
Mexico, the evidence does not support that conclusion beyond a
reasonable doubt. "We really can't get to the extraterrestrial," stated
Randle. "We can eliminate practically everything else that you care to
mention, but that still doesn't get us to the extraterrestrial."
[71]
Shoddy research revealed; witnesses suspected of hoaxes
Around the same time in the late 1990s, a serious rift developed between two prominent Roswell authors.
Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt had co-authored several books on the subject, and were generally acknowledged, along with
Stanton Friedman, to be the leading researchers of the Roswell incident.
[48] The
Air Force reports on the incident suggested that basic research that was claimed to have been carried out was not in fact carried out,
[72] a fact verified in a 1995
Omni magazine article.
[73] Additionally, Schmitt claimed he had a
bachelor's degree, a
master's degree and was in the midst of pursuing a
doctorate in
criminology. He also claimed to be a
medical illustrator. When checked, it was revealed he was in fact a
letter carrier in
Hartford, Wisconsin,
and had no known academic credentials. At the same time, Randle
publicly distanced himself from Schmitt and his research. Referring to
Schmitt’s investigation of witness Dennis’s accounts of a missing nurse
at the Roswell base, he said: "The search for the nurses proves that he
[Schmitt] will lie about anything. He will lie to anyone ... He has
revealed himself as a
pathological liar [...] I will have nothing more to do with him."
[48]
Additionally, several prominent witnesses were shown to be
perpetrating hoaxes, or suspected of doing so. Frank Kaufmann was a
major source of alien reports in the 1994 Randle and Schmitt book
The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell. He was the witness whose testimony it was charged was “ignored” by the Air Force when compiling their reports.
[74]
However, after his 2001 death, he was shown to have been forging
documents and inflating his role at Roswell. Randle and Mark Rodeigher
repudiated Kaufmann’s credibility in two 2002 articles.
[75]
Glenn Dennis, who testified that Roswell alien autopsies were carried
out at the Roswell base, and that he and others were the subjects of
threats, was deemed one of the “least credible” Roswell witnesses by
Randle in 1998. In Randle and Schmitt’s 1991 book
UFO Crash at Roswell,
Dennis’s story was featured prominently. Randle said Dennis was not
credible “for changing the name of the nurse once we had proved she
didn't exist.”
[76] Dennis’s accounts were also doubted by researcher Pflock.
[67]
Photo analysis; documentaries; new claims
UFO researcher David Rudiak, and others before him, claimed that a
telegram which appears in one of the 1947 photos of balloon debris in
Ramey's office contains text that confirms that aliens and a "disk" were
found. Rudiak and some other examiners claim that when enlarged, the
text on the paper General Ramey is apparently holding in his hand
includes key phrases "the victims of the wreck" and "in/on the 'disc'"
plus other phrases seemingly in the context of a crashed vehicle
recovery.
[77]
However, pro-UFO interpretations of this document are disputed by other
photoanalyses, such as one facilitated by researcher James Houran,
Ph.D.,
[78]
which suggest that the letters and words are indistinct. Other
objections question the plausibility of a general allowing himself to be
photographed holding such a document, raise issues with the format of
the memo, and ponder the logic of Ramey having in his possession a
document he, as Rudiak argued, has supposedly sent, which says "...the
wreck you forwarded..." and yet is supposedly addressed to the
Headquarters of the Army Air Force in Washington, not the Roswell Army
Air Field.
[79]
Enlargement of Gen. Ramey's held message in the original photo.
In 2002, the
Sci-Fi Channel
sponsored an excavation at the Brazel site, in the hopes of uncovering
debris that the military failed to collect. Although these results have
so far been negative, the
University of New Mexico
archaeological 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."
On October 26, 2007, Richardson (who at the time was a candidate for the
Democratic Party
nomination for U.S. President) was asked about releasing government
files on Roswell. Richardson responded that when he was a Congressman,
he attempted to get information on behalf of his New Mexico
constituents, but was told by both the Department of Defense and Los
Alamos Labs that the information was classified. "That ticked me off,"
he said "The government doesn't tell the truth as much as it should on a
lot of issues." He promised to work on opening the files if he were
elected as President.
[80]
In October 2002, before airing its Roswell documentary, the Sci-Fi Channel 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."
[81]
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.
[citation needed]
Top Secret/Majic (2005 edition)
Stanton T. Friedman continues to defend his view that the
Majestic 12
(also known as Majic-12) documents, which describe a secret government
agency hiding information on recovered aliens, are authentic. In an
afterword dated April 2005 to a new edition of his book
Top Secret/Majic
(first published in 1996), he responds to more recent questions on
their validity and concludes "I am still convinced Roswell really
happened, [and] that the Eisenhower Briefing Document [i.e., Majestic
12] ... [and others] are the most important classified documents ever
leaked to the public."
[82]
Witness to Roswell (2007)
In June 2007, Donald Schmitt and his investigation partner Tom Carey published their first book together,
Witness to Roswell.
[83]
In this book, they claim a "continuously growing roster of more than
600 people directly or indirectly associated with the events at Roswell
who support the first account - that initial claim of the flying saucer
recovery."
[84] New accounts of aliens or alien recoveries were described, including the account of
Walter Haut, who wrote the initial press release in 1947.
A new date was suggested for the crash of a mysterious object—the evening of Thursday, July 3, 1947.
[85][86]
Also, unlike previous accounts, Brazel took the debris to Corona, where
he showed fragments to local residents in the local bar, hardware
store, and elsewhere, and to Capitan to the south, where portions of the
object ended up at a
4th of July rodeo.
[87]
Numerous people are described as visiting the debris field and taking
souvenirs before Brazel finally went to Roswell to report the find on
July 6. Once the military was alerted to the debris, extensive efforts
were undertaken to retrieve those souvenirs: "Ranch houses were and
[sic] ransacked. The wooden floors of livestock sheds were pried loose
plank by plank and underground cold storage fruit cellars were emptied
of all their contents."
[88]
The subsequent events are related as per the sequence in previous
books, except for a second recovery site of an alien body at the Foster
ranch. This recovery near the debris field is the same site mentioned in
1991's
UFO Crash at Roswell. The authors suggest that Brazel
discovered the second site some days after finding the debris field, and
this prompted him to travel to Roswell and report his find to the
authorities.
Neither Barnett nor the archaeologists are reported to be present at
this body site. While noting the earlier "major problems" with Barnett's
account, which caused Schmitt and previous partner Randle to omit
Barnett's claim in 1994's
The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell,
the new book further notes another site mentioned in the 1994
publication. This site closer to Roswell "turned out to be bogus, as it
was based upon the testimony of a single, alleged eyewitness [Frank
Kaufmann] who himself was later discovered to have been a purveyor of
false information."
[89]
Jim Ragsdale, whose alien account opened that book and who was claimed
to have been present along with some archaeologists, is not mentioned in
the new book.
The 2007 book includes claims that Major Marcel saw alien bodies, a
claim not present in previous books. Two witnesses are cited who say
Marcel briefly mentioned seeing bodies, one a relative and another a
Tech Sergeant who worked with Marcel's intelligence team.
[90]
Much additional new testimony is presented to support notions that
alien bodies were found at the Foster ranch and at another main crash
site along with a craft, then processed at the base in a
hangar
and at the hospital, and the bodies finally flown out in containers,
all under very tight security. The book suggests Brazel found "two or
three alien bodies" about two miles east of the debris field, and
describes the rest of a stricken alien craft along with the remainder of
the crew remaining airborne for some 30 more miles before crashing at
another site about 40 miles north/northwest of Roswell (but not the same
site described by Kaufmann). The authors claim to have located this
final crash site in 2005 where "an additional two or three dead aliens
and one live one were discovered by civilian archaeologists," but offer
no more information about the new site.
[91]
Walter Haut, the Roswell Army Air Field public affairs officer, had
drafted the initial press release which went out over the news wires on
the afternoon of July 8, 1947, announcing a "flying disc". This was
supposedly the only direct involvement Haut had in public statements and
signed affidavits. The book presents a new affidavit that Haut signed
in 2002 in which he claims much greater personal knowledge and
involvement, including seeing alien corpses and craft, and involvement
in a cover-up. Haut died in 2005.
[92]
Another new firsthand account from MP Elias Benjamin describes how he guarded aliens on
gurneys taken to the Roswell base hospital from the same hangar.
[93]
Similarly, family members of Miriam Bush, secretary to the chief
medical officer at Roswell base, told of having been led into an
examination room where alien corpses were laid out on gurneys.
[94]
In both accounts, one of the aliens was said to be still alive. The
book also recounted earlier testimony of the Anaya family about picking
up New Mexico Lt. Governor
Joseph Montoya at the base, and a badly shaken Montoya relating that he saw four alien bodies at the base hangar, one of them alive.
[95]
Benjamin's and Bush's accounts, as do a few lesser ones, again place
aliens at the Roswell base hospital, as had the Glenn Dennis story from
almost 20 years before. The book notes that Dennis had been found to
have told lies, and therefore is a supplier of unreliable testimony, but
had nevertheless told others of incidents at the Roswell base long
before it became associated with aliens in the late 1970s.
[96]
Walter Haut controversy
The 2007 publishing of the Walter Haut affidavit
[97][98] in
Witness to Roswell, wherein Haut described a cover-up and seeing alien corpses, ignited a controversy in UFO circles.
[99]
While many embraced Haut's accounts as confirmation of the presence of
aliens from a person who was known to have been on the base in 1947,
others raised questions about his credibility.
UFO researcher Dennis G. Balthaser, who along with fellow researcher
Wendy Connors interviewed Haut on-camera in 2000, doubted that the same
man he interviewed could have written the affidavit he signed. "[The
2000 video] shows a man that couldn't remember where he took basic
training, names, dates, etc., while the 2002 affidavit is very detailed
and precise with information Haut couldn't accurately remember 2 years
after he was video taped."
[100] Witness to Roswell
co-author Donald R. Schmitt, he notes, admitted that the affidavit was
not written by Haut, but prepared for him to sign, based on statements
Haut had made privately to Schmitt and co-author Tom Carey over a period
of years.
[101]
And further, notes Balthaser, neither he nor Carey were there when Haut
signed the affidavit and the witness' name has not been revealed,
casting doubt on the circumstances of the signing.
Balthaser had further questions about what he saw as problems with
the 2002 account. If the cover-up was decided at a meeting at Roswell,
he asked, "why was it necessary for Major Marcel to fly debris from
Roswell to General Ramey’s office in Ft Worth, since they had all
handled the debris in the meeting and apparently set up the cover-up
operation?" He also wondered which Haut statements were true: a 1993
affidavit he signed, the 2000 video interview, or the 2002 affidavit.
Bill Birnes, writing for UFO Magazine, summarizes that whatever
disagreements there are about the 2000 video and the 2002 affidavit, "I
think Walter Haut's 2002 affidavit really says it all and agrees, on its
material facts, with Walter's 2000 interview with Dennis Balthaser and
Wendy Connors. Dennis said he agrees with me, too, on this point."
[102]
A comparison of the affidavit and interview shows that in both
accounts Haut said he saw a craft and at least one body in a base hangar
and also attended a Roswell staff meeting where General Ramey was
present and where Ramey put a cover-up into place.
[103][104]
Birnes also says that Carey said that while Haut may not have written
the affidavit, "his statements were typed, shown to him for his review
and agreement, and then affirmed by him in the presence of a witness...
The fact that a notary was present and sealed the document should end
any doubt as to the reality of its existence."
[105]
Julie Shuster, Haut's daughter and Director of the International UFO
Museum in Roswell, said that Schmitt had written the affidavit based on
years of conversations he and Carey had had with him. Writing in the
September 2007 MUFON newsletter, she said she and Haut reviewed the
document, that "he did not want to make any changes," and in the
presence of two witnesses, a notary public from the museum and a
visitor, both unidentified, he signed the affidavit.
[106]
UFO FBI document release, 2011
The 2011 FBI document claiming to find "three so-called flying saucers"
In April 2011, the FBI posted a 1950 document from agent Guy Hottel
which discussed a report by an investigator for the Air Forces (sic) of
"three so-called flying saucers" and their occupants having been
recovered in New Mexico.
[107] The document says:
- Office Memorandum • United States Government
- TO: DIRECTOR, FBI [and then across from it, right justified] DATE: March 22, 1950
- FROM: GUY HOTTEL, SAC, WASHINGTON
- SUBJECT: FLYING SAUCERS
- INFORMATION CONCERNING
- [Handwritten:]
- Flying Discs or Flying Saucers
- The following information was furnished to SA [redacted] by [two lines redacted].
- An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called
flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as
being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in
diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only
three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each
body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by
speed flyers and test pilots.
- According to Mr. [redacted] informant, the saucers were found in New
Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered
radar set-up in that area and it is believed that the radar interferes
with the controlling mechanism of the saucers.
- No further evaluation was attempted by SA [redacted] concerning the above.
- RHK:VIM
Though no dates are mentioned regarding the events, the memo has a
typed date of March 22, 1950, and two differently-sized date stamps: one
March 29, 1950 (larger, at bottom) and one March 28, 1950, the latter
of which has a handwritten number above it: 62-838-94-209, the last part
with "-209" being somewhat widely spaced from the former. (Other things
are typed and handwritten on the copy of the memorandum that is
included with this article.)
No location more specific than "New Mexico" is seen.
Some sources connected the memo to the Roswell UFO incident of 1947.
[108]
Other sources said the memo had been in the public domain for years,
and was revealed as a hoax as far back as 1952 in an article in
True magazine.
[109] They said the hoax was perpetrated by several men who were peddling a device purported to be able to locate
gold,
oil,
gas or anything their victims sought, based on supposed alien
technology. The two men, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, were convicted
of
fraud in 1953.
[110]
In 2013, the FBI issued a press release regarding the memo. In
addressing the memo's context, the Bureau wrote, "Finally, the Hottel
memo does not prove the existence of UFOs; it is simply a second- or
third-hand claim that we never investigated. Some people believe the
memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau’s
files have no information to verify that theory."
[111]
Area 51 (2011)
American journalist
Annie Jacobsen's
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base (2011), based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in
Area 51, dismisses the alien story. It suggested that
Josef Mengele, a German
Schutzstaffel officer and a physician in
Auschwitz, was recruited by the Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin to produce "grotesque, child-size aviators" to be remotely piloted and landed in America in order to cause hysteria similar to
Orson Welles'
War of the Worlds (1938). The aircraft, however, crashed and the incident was hushed up by the Americans.
[citation needed]
Jacobsen wrote that the bodies found at the crash site were children
around 12 years old with large heads and abnormally-shaped, over-sized
eyes. They were neither aliens nor consenting airmen, but human guinea
pigs.
[112] The book was criticized for extensive errors by scientists from the
Federation of American Scientists.
[113]
See also
