The Facts:

          Sometime during the first week of July 1947, a local New Mexico
          rancher, Mac Brazel, while riding out in the morning to check his
          sheep after a night of intense thunderstorms, discovered a
          considerable amount of unusual debris. It had created a shallow
          gouge several hundred feet long and was scattered over a large area.
          Some of the debris had strange physical properties. After taking a
          few pieces to show his neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor, Brazel
          drove into Roswell and contacted the sheriff, George Wilcox. Sheriff
          Wilcox notified authorities at Roswell Army Air Field and with the
          assistance of his deputies, proceeded to investigate the matter.
          Shortly after becoming involved, the military closed off the area for a
          number of days and retrieved the wreckage. It was initially taken to
          Roswell Army Air Field and eventually flown by B-29 and C-54
          aircraft to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.

          Roswell Army Air Field was the home of the 509th Bomb Group,
          which was an elite outfit -- the only atomic group in the world. On the
          morning of July 8, 1947, Colonel Blanchard, Commander of the 509th
          Bomb Group, issued a press release stating that the wreckage of a
          "crashed disk" (UFO) had been recovered. The press release was
          transmitted over the wire services in time to make headlines in over
          thirty U.S. afternoon newspapers that same day.

          Within hours, a second press release was issued from the office of
          General Roger Ramey, Commander of the Eighth Air Force at Fort
          Worth Army Air Field in Texas, 400 miles from the crash site. It
          revoked the first press release and, in effect, claimed that Colonel
          Blanchard and the officers of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell had
          made an unbelievably foolish mistake and somehow incorrectly
          identified a weather balloon and its radar reflector as the wreckage
          of a "crashed disk."

          One of those two press releases had to be untrue. There is now solid
          testimony from numerous credible military and civilian witnesses who
          were directly involved, that the "crashed disk" press release issued
          by Colonel Blanchard was true and that the subsequent "weather
          balloon" press release from Eighth Air Force Headquarters in Fort
          Worth, Texas, was a hastily contrived cover story.

          The Witnesses

          The first witness located by investigators who was willing to testify
          and allow his name to be used was , the intelligence officer of the
          509th Bomb Group at Roswell. He was a highly competent individual
          and one of the first two military officers at the actual crash site. In a
          1979 videotaped interview, Jesse Marcel stated, "...it was not a
          weather balloon, nor was it an airplane or a missile." As to the exotic
          properties of some of the material, he stated, "It would not
          burn...that stuff weighs nothing, it's so thin, it isn't any thicker than
          the tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes. So, I tried to bend the stuff. It
          wouldn't bend. We even tried making a dent in it with a sixteen-pound
          sledge hammer. And there was still no dent in it."

          It is inconceivable that a man of Marcel's qualifications and
          experience would have mistaken any kind of conventional wreckage,
          much less the remains of a weather balloon and its radar reflector,
          for that of a craft or vehicle that in his words was "not of this earth."
          . When returning to the base, he stopped by his house with a few
          pieces of the unusual wreckage to show his wife and eleven-year-old
          son. One piece, a small section of I-beam, had strange hieroglyphic
          like symbols on its surface. His son has been able to produce detailed
          drawings of some of the symbols.

          The late General Thomas DuBose testified that he himself had taken
          the telephone call from General Clements McMullen at Andrews
          Army Air Field in Washington, D.C., ordering the coverup. The
          instructions were for General Ramey to concoct a "cover story" to
          "get the press off our backs."

          . In a 1990 interview, General Exon said of the testing, "Everything
          from chemical analysis, stress tests, compression tests, flexing. It
          was brought into our material evaluation labs. (Some of it) could be
          easily ripped or changed...there were other parts of it that were very
          thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with heavy
          hammers...." Of the men that did the testing, he said, "...the overall
          consensus was that the pieces were from space."

         The Aliens?

          The testimony of Mr. Glenn Dennis leaves little doubt about the
          nature of what was recovered in 1947. . In 1947 Glenn Dennis was a
          young mortician working for the Ballard Funeral Home, which had a
          contract to provide mortuary and ambulance services for Roswell
          Army Air Field.

          Prior to learning about the recovery of the unusual wreckage at
          Roswell, he received several telephone calls one afternoon from the
          mortuary officer at the air field. He was asked about the availability
          of small, hermetically sealed caskets and questioned about how to
          preserve bodies that had been exposed to the elements for several
          days. There was concern about possibly altering the chemical
          composition of the tissue.

          Later that evening, as a result of unrelated events, he made a trip to
          the base hospital. Outside the back entrance he observed two
          military ambulances with open rear doors, from which large pieces of
          wreckage protruded, including one with a row of unusual symbols on
          its surface. Once inside, he encountered a young nurse whom he
          knew. At that same instant, he was noticed by military police, who
          physically threatened him and forcibly escorted him from the
          building.

          He met with the nurse the next day, and she explained what had been
          going on at the hospital. She was a very religious person and was
          upset to the point of being in a state of shock. She described how she
          had been called in to assist two doctors who were doing autopsies on
          several small nonhuman bodies. She described the terrible smell, how
          one body was in good shape and the others mangled, and the
          differences between their anatomy and human anatomy. She also
          drew a diagram on a napkin showing an outline of their features. That
          meeting was to be their last -- she was transferred to England a few
          days later.

          In addition to Glenn Dennis, other witnesses were physically
          threatened or intimidated. According to members of Sheriff Wilcox's
          family, he was told by the military, in the presence of his wife, that he
          and his entire family would be killed if he ever spoke about what he
          had seen. The rancher who originally discovered the wreckage, Mac
          Brazel, was sequestered by the military for almost a week and sworn
          to secrecy. He never spoke about the incident again, even to his
          family. In the months following the incident, his son, Bill Brazel,
          found and collected a few "scraps" of material, which he kept in a
          cigar box. The material was eventually confiscated by the military.

         Fantasy?

          The Roswell event involved a large number of people and has been
          publicized since 1980. Logic would dictate that had there been a more
          mundane explanation for the unusual debris, numerous individuals
          would have come forward to set the record straight by corroborating
          the "weather balloon" story or by providing some other explanation
          for the wreckage, such as a V2 missile or experimental aircraft. That
          has not been the case. Furthermore, records rule out a missile or
          aircraft. Additionally, the amount and nature of the debris rule out
          any type of balloon or balloon instrument package, including that
          from project Mogul -- the most recently postulated prosaic
          explanation.

         Cover-Up?

          With Roswell so well documented, the question that arises is why the
          mainstream media has not pursued the story. Two factors stand out.
          The first is that of a negative mindset. There is a tendency in human
          nature to resist anything that challenges our preconceived
          perceptions of reality. In most cases, such an attitude serves us well
          and manifests itself as a healthy skepticism. In other instances, it
          may result in a close-minded refusal by otherwise intelligent people
          to consider compelling evidence -- especially when that evidence
          seems to defy common sense or prevailing scientific theory. Many
          past revelations of science, for example, have met such resistance --
          a round earth, evolution, relativity, continental drift, quantum theory,
          an expanding universe -- to name a few.

          The second and most damaging factor is ridicule. Unfortunately,
          UFOs have long been associated with tabloid stories, hoaxes, and the
          "lunatic fringe." In addition, people tend to put UFOs in the same
          category as ghosts, mysticism, magic, and other forms of the occult
          or the supernatural. As a result, anything even remotely related to
          the area of UFOs is a difficult subject to broach without risking a loss
          of credibility. Consequently, members of the mainstream media
          rarely approach the subject, much less treat it with any degree of
          seriousness or depth. No one wants to make himself an easy target
          for cynicism or ridicule.

          Agencies in which something might be known, such as the CIA, have
          refused to cooperate with investigators. When seeking Roswell or
          UFO-related documents through the Freedom of Information Act,
          researchers have been repeatedly stonewalled. Claims are made that
          documents don't exist or can't be released for national security
          reasons. The few documents that have been released have often
          been so blacked out that they are rendered meaningless.

         Why the Secrecy still?

          Why the U.S. Government defiantly maintains there is nothing to the
          UFO phenomenon and why it would want to withhold evidence of
          extraterrestrial intelligence remain a matter of speculation. Three
          possible reasons have been suggested: fear of mass panic, perceived
          national security problems, and concern about offending religious
          groups. Whether arguments in any of these areas have merit is
          questionable. Most would agree, however, that whatever reasons
          there may be for withholding such information, they are far
          outweighed by those for releasing it.

          Furthermore, we are nearly 35 years into the Space Age and at the
          brink of the 21st century. This is a generation that until recently lived
          for years under the threat of nuclear destruction and that now must
          deal with such threats as AIDS, rising rates of violent crime,
          international terrorism, etc. The possibility that the confirmation of
          extraterrestrial intelligence would cause mass panic in this day and
          age is so remote that it hardly merits mention.

          The arguments for maintaining secrecy based on national security
          are just as specious as those based on mass panic. Assuming the
          wreckage the military retrieved from Roswell was that of an
          extraterrestrial craft, it would be understandable that the U.S.
          Government would want to reverse-engineer the technology. It would
          be reasonable that the government would want to keep certain details
          of that technology secret. As with any technology with the potential
          for misuse, such precaution would be prudent and justified. However,
          the very existence of such a craft would have profound implications.
          The mere knowledge by the public of that existence would not pose
          any kind of threat. Denying the public such knowledge would not be
          justified and would be an abuse of the power entrusted to those who
          oversee the country's national security.

          In the end, however, whether information is being suppressed or
          whether it is not, the effect of an Executive Order declassifying it
          would be positive. If nothing is being withheld, the result of such an
          Order would be to set the record straight once and for all. Years of
          controversy and suspicion would be ended, both in the eyes of the
          United States' own citizens and in the eyes of the world.

          If, on the other hand, the Roswell witnesses are telling the truth and
          information on extraterrestrial intelligence does exist, it is not
          something to which a privileged few in the United States Government
          should have exclusive rights. It is knowledge of profound importance
          to which all people throughout the world should have an inalienable
          right. Its release would unquestionably be universally acknowledged
          as an historic act of honesty and goodwill.