Roswell Daily Record for Tuesday, July 8, 1947
NO DETAILS OF FLYING DISK ARE REVEALED
The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army 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 office 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 in slight less then a minute, perhaps 40 or 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 inside, though not like it would be if a light were merely underneath. From where he stood Wilmot said the object looked to be about 5 feet in size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must have been 15 to 20 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 and tell about having seen one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about it. The announcement that rhe RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen.
Fifty years ago, an incident occurred in the southwestern desert of the United States that could have significant implications for all mankind. The incident was announced by the U.S. military, subsequently denied by the U.S. military, and has remained veiled in government secrecy ever since. Although it is in a category fraught with false claims and hoaxes, it is not a hoax or false claim, but rather a known event that is thoroughly documented. It is the objective here to summarize the details of that event, affirm the right of all people throughout the world to know the truth about what occurred, and propose a course of action that will allow that truth to emerge.
The event took place during the first week of July 1947 and involved the recovery of wreckage by the military from a remote ranch northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. There is now considerable testimony from former members of the military known to have been involved, including two brigadier generals, that the recovered material was not of terrestrial origin. Admittedly, such a claim taxes the limits of credibility for discerning and rational individuals. It also tends to evoke a response of immediate dismissal. The preponderance of evidence, however, indicates the event occurred.
On January 12, 1994, United States Congressman Steven Schiff of Albuquerque, New Mexico, stated to the press that he had been stonewalled by the Defense Department when requesting information regarding the 1947 Roswell event on behalf of constituents and witnesses. Indicating he was seeking further investigation into the matter, Congressman Schiff called the Defense Department's lack of response "astounding" and concluded it was apparently "another government coverup."
Detailed information on the recovery of the wreckage at Roswell and of related events is extensive. Some years ago investigators were able to obtain a copy of the 1947 Roswell Army Air Field yearbook. This enabled them to locate witnesses throughout the country. Newspaper accounts show that during late June and early July 1947, there was a wave of reports of "flying disks" (UFOs) throughout the United States and Canada. Many of those reports came from credible witnesses, including pilots and other trained observers.
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 William 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 rescinded 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 William Blanchard of the 509th Bomb Group from Roswell 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.
Those who knew and worked with William Blanchard say he was a solid, no-nonsense, businesslike individual, and not someone who would make a fool of himself and the Air Force by ordering a press release about something as out of the ordinary and dramatic as the event at Roswell without being certain he was correct. In other words, if Blanchard issued a press release saying there was a crashed disk, there was a crashed disk. Colonel William Blanchard would later go on to become a four-star general and Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.
The first witness located by investigators who was willing to testify and allow his name to be used was retired Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Marcel, 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 Jesse Marcel's qualifications and experience, the intelligence officer of the only atomic-bomb group in the world, 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." Even if he had initially made such a gross misidentification, he would certainly have been able to see his mistake later after it had been brought to his attention. 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, Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., now a practicing medical doctor and qualified National Guard helicopter pilot and flight surgeon, remembers the incident well. He has been able to produce detailed drawings of some of the symbols.
During his career, Jesse Marcel Sr., went on to other important assignments, including the preparation of a report on the first Soviet nuclear detonation, which went directly to President Truman. The late General Thomas DuBose was a colonel and General Ramey's chief of staff at Eighth Air Force Headquarters in Forth Worth, Texas, in 1947. Before his death in 1992, General 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."
This photograph of the wreckage, which appears to be nothing more than aluminum foil and wood, was part of the agenda to maintain the weather balloon "cover story".
Retired General Arthur E. Exon was stationed at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, as a lieutenant colonel in July of 1947 during the time the wreckage from Roswell was brought in. 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 testimony of Mr. Glenn Dennis leaves little doubt about the nature of what was recovered in 1947. Glenn Dennis still lives in the Roswell, New Mexico, area and is a respected businessman and member of the community. He is down-to-earth and straightforward. 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.
The main part of the craft apparently came down some distance from the "debris field" at the Brazel ranch. Researchers were only recently able to confirm this second site because few people knew about it. According to witness testimony, this is also the site where the bodies were found. Most of the witnesses to this site have not, in fear of government reprisal, allowed their names to be used. A prestigious law firm has recently been retained to provide legal counsel to any such witnesses who might consider going public with their testimony. Attorneys from the firm have already met with several Roswell witnesses. 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.
The Roswell case does not stand alone as the only solid evidence of a coverup of UFO information by the U.S. government. In 1980, after having filed numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a group known as Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) learned of 156 UFO-related documents held by the National Security Agency (NSA) and of internal references to a large number of UFO-related documents held by other agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While this was an interesting revelation, researchers believe that it would not be possible through FOIA requests to find even references to the most important UFO documents (such as those relating to Roswell). This information would, presumably, be buried much deeper.
The members of CAUS proceeded with a FOIA request for the 156 NSA UFO documents, but were denied access to all of them. They subsequently filed an appeal in federal court and lost. Interestingly, the National Security Agency did not even allow the judge in the hearing, Gerhardt Gessell of the First Federal Court, District of Columbia, to view the 156 UFO documents. Instead, the NSA submitted a special 21-page "top secret plus" affidavit to the judge, giving its arguments for withholding the documents. An unusual action from a government that officially denies having any knowledge about the existence of UFOs!
It is important to realize that the vast majority of people employed by the U.S. government, even those with top secret clearances, would not have access to classified UFO information such as the 156 NSA UFO documents. In all probability, most of these government employees, like the rest of us, would like to know the truth about UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether any members of Congress have access to such information and, given the size of the government bureaucracy and high degree of compartmentalization that exists within it, it is conceivable that even the President has not been fully briefed on the subject.
For obvious reasons, it is necessary that the military services and the intelligence agencies impose a certain amount of secrecy. In recent decades, however, many observers say that the use of government secrecy has become excessive. Secrecy is tantamount to power and, like power, lends itself to abuse. Behind the shield of secrecy, it is possible for an agency or service to avoid scrutiny and essentially operate outside the law. Accountability to the taxpayers, and to the Congress, can be conveniently avoided. Perhaps this is a major reason the U.S. annual "black budget" (government spending on secret programs) has climbed to a staggering $25 billion a year. The 1995 budget for the National Security Agency alone is projected at $3.5 billion according to the publication Defense Week.
Secrecy, like power, is not readily relinquished. Traditionally, those in power tend to vehemently resist change of any type, including change that would be in the public interest. Anything that might upset the status quo is perceived as a potential threat to entrenched position or power. For example, the November 11, 1994, New York Times reported that an Executive Order signed by President Clinton declassifying nearly 44 million pages of secret documents, some dating back to 1917, was delayed nearly a year because of resistance from military and intelligence officials. The New York Times article also reported that although 22 years ago President Nixon promised "immediate and systematic declassification" of Vietnam War documents, nearly five million pages of those documents are still being withheld at the demand of military and intelligence officials. In view of this kind of obsession with secrecy on the part of the government, obtaining the release of information that has been as closely guarded as NSA and CIA UFO documents or the files on Roswell is not going to be an easy task.
Fortunately, a number of politicians, including President Clinton, are aware of the problem of excessive secrecy and have pledged to do something about it. There are also some politicians known to have an interest in the subject of UFOs, but few have had the courage to speak out. One notable exception is former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.
Senator Goldwater agreed to do a pre-taped interview for the Larry King special on UFOs, broadcast on October 1, 1994. In reference to government-held information on UFOs, Senator Goldwater stated, "I think the government does know." He went on to say, "...I think that at Wright Patterson Field, if you could get into certain places, you'd find out what the Air Force and the government does know about UFOs. Reportedly, a spaceship landed. It was all hushed up...I called Curtis LeMay and I said, "General, I know we have a room at Wright Patterson where you put all this secret stuff, could I go in there?" "I've never heard him get mad, but he got madder than hell at me, cussed me out, and said, `Don't ever ask me that question again!'"
On numerous occasions, Senator Goldwater has publicly mentioned his experience with General LeMay and his belief in a government coverup concerning UFOs. However, he had never mentioned Roswell specifically until July 1994. At that time, in response to a letter about the Roswell Initiative, Senator Goldwater wrote, "You touch something very close to me, by your letter. Roswell has long been a point of great interest to me, since the first UFOs turned up." Of great surprise to Roswell researchers, he stated, "Butch Blanchard was a very close friend of mine. I worked with him in the Air Force..." (General William "Butch" Blanchard was the officer who, as a Colonel and Commander of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field in 1947, issued the press release that a crashed disk [UFO] had been recovered.) With respect to "getting the things about Roswell that you would like," he stated, "I tried diligently to get them from General LeMay, and the only cussing out he ever gave me was when I very vociferously asked him for information."
Senator Goldwater was the Republican party's presidential candidate in 1964 (against Lyndon Johnson), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for eight years, chairman of the Senate Armed Service's Committee for four years, and a major general in the Air Force Reserves. Many consider Senator Goldwater one of the most distinguished, respected, and honest U.S. statesmen of this century. He retired from public service in 1987 after having served 30 years in the U.S. Senate.
If, as the Roswell evidence indicates, information confirming the existence of other intelligent life in the universe is being withheld from the people of the world by a few privileged individuals in the U.S. government, such withholding is a crime against all humanity and a gross misuse of the power entrusted to those individuals. It is, in effect, a form of censorship on a nonmilitary and a non-national security issue. The question must be asked: What gives these individuals the right to keep this information to themselves, thereby depriving the rest of the world of knowledge of almost inconceivable magnitude and consequence? Do these individuals consider themselves, by virtue of some divine providence or other abstract rationale, so above the rest of us that only they are entitled to or are capable of handling this information?
Such arrogance and elitism by the officials of any government, much less a government based upon the principles of democracy and individual rights, is a gross injustice against not only its own people, but all people. At issue is knowledge so profound that it affects our very perspective on man's place in the universe.
While the organizers of the Roswell Initiative feel that it is highly probable that the U.S. government is withholding such information, the primary goal of the initiative is to get the matter into the open so that the truth can be conclusively determined, one way or the other. It is hoped, therefore, that all individuals, no matter what their opinion on the subject, will support this effort. There has never before been a grassroots movement of such magnitude on this issue, and there may never be again. This effort could represent the best chance that we will ever have of learning the truth about this matter.
Despite an overwhelmingly positive response, the battle is far from won. Too many people, while supporting this cause in principle, are unwilling to get involved. It is critical, therefore, that all individuals who do support this effort participate by signing a copy of the Roswell Declaration and distributing it to others.
One of the most basic philosophical and scientific questions contemplated by modern man is, "Are we alone?" If the Roswell premise is correct, as we believe it to be, and we are successful in what we are trying to accomplish, that question will be answered with absolute finality, once and for all. People all over the world will be able to look up at the firmament of the night sky with its millions of stars and feel an even greater sense of wonder about what is out there.
The Air Force held a press conference on June the 24th, 1997 with the hopes of putting an end to the Roswell controversey. The new report follows up on a 1995 Air Force study saying that debris recovered near Roswell, N.M., was connected with Project Mogul, a top-secret operation to use weather balloons and radar equipment to monitor Soviet nuclear blasts. That report, however; failed to address the lingering questions about alien bodies recovered at the crash. Among this new report’s conclusions: The alien bodies observed in the New Mexico desert were "probably" test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high-altitude balloons for scientific research. The Air Force clearly states the title of this report as "The Roswell Report: Case Closed." If the case is closed, then why "probably" test dummies? Doesn't sound to definitive to me.
I have, as you can imagine, some other problems with the credibility of this report. The crash-test dummies were used from 1954 to 1959 in the New Mexico desert, while the Roswell crash happened in July 1947. The Air Force would like us to believe that witnesses simply got their dates confused. But by ten years? I don't think so. Not to mention that these dummies were up to 6' feet tall.
The Air Force also tried to dazzle us with film footage of Defense projects that contained vehicles and payloads that did, I absolutely admit, resemble our common interpretation of the "flying saucer". But, what the Air Force failed to bring to attention was the fact that the film footage they were showing was actually from the 1970,s. So now we're 25 years after the fact. Are you following this?
This was obviously just an eleventh hour attempt to try and silence all this alien mania that seems to be sweeping the nation. Some 50,000 people arrived in Roswell over the 4th of July weekend of 1997. All this report accomplished was to make the Government look more suspicious and incompetent than usual.
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