**Research compiled for Ryan on August 2, 2017 by Micki Taylor.
1947: UFOs Errywhere?
There was a wave of well-known claims of UFO sightings in 1947.
On June 21st, a Navy seaman named Harold Dahl claimed he saw six UFOs above Puget Sound in Washington state. Dahl also claimed that he was visited and debriefed by “men in black” the following morning.
On June 24th, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and private pilot with a good reputation, was in flight near Mt. Rainier, WA, searching for a downed plane, when he reportedly saw nine disc-shaped objects traveling at a speed he estimated to be over 1,000 mph.
Arnold’s alleged sighting was followed by many more reports of supposed UFOs. Some of the claims were even made by military pilots.
As the CIA points out, this coincided with the emergence of Cold War tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.
The Doomsday Clock was also unveiled in 1947 (and is still maintained today). Created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists amidst nuclear threat, the idea is that, the closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is to imminent disaster.
UFO sightings in North America date back to at least the 17th century, but many UFO researchers believe there have been references made to UFOs in other parts of the world since ancient times. (Pg 21)
In the last six months of 1947, there were over 300 claims of UFO sightings.
The 1947 Roswell Incident
On July 7th, 1947, a rancher by the name of W.W. “Mac” Brazel told Sheriff George Wilcox he’d found something northwest of Roswell, New Mexico on a sheep ranch belonging to J.B. Foster.
Brazel described his discovery as “a large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, and rather tough paper, and sticks.”
A 1995 government report reveals that Brazel actually initially found the debris on June 14th while with his son. (according to article)
He returned on July 4th to pick up some of the debris.
After hearing of reports of flying saucers, Brazel then wondered if he might have found evidence of a similar aircraft.
It wasn’t until July 7th that Brazel decided to contact local law enforcement on the matter.
Unsure what to make of the debris, Wilcox contacted Colonel “Butch” Blanchard at the nearby military base, the Roswell Army Airfield. This was the base of the 509th Bombardment Group which deployed atomic bombs at the end of World War II.
Blanchard then alerted his superior in Forth Worth, Texas -- General Roger W. Ramey.
Blanchard also sent the 509th Bomb Group’s intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel, to conduct further investigation and recover the materials. Marcel was likely accompanied by Lt. Col. Sheridan Cavitt.
Public information officer Lt. Walter Haut issued a press release on Blanchard’s orders and based off Marcel’s information. This press release essentially said that they believed they had a “flying saucer” in their possession.
On July 8th, the afternoon paper, the Roswell Daily Record’s front page ran the headline, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region”. From that article: “The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into the possession of a Flying Saucer.”
However, that same day, it was determined that the debris was not extraterrestrial.
General Ramey ordered the remnants sent to him in Fort Worth so that he could personally inspect them.
He and his staff identified the pieces as those of a weather balloon.
Ramey then had the base weather officer confirm that the debris belonged to a weather balloon and its various metallic parts.
Ramey released another press release stating as much after allowing the press to see and photograph the materials in question
On July 9th, the Roswell Daily Record Roswell Dispatch printed a new story with the headline, “Army Debunks Roswell Flying Disc as World Simmers with Excitement”
I see this article titled as “Harassed Rancher who Located ‘Saucer” Sorry He Told About It” unless there were two front page articles? Pg 77 Confirmed, Photo of article and excerpt
Brazel is said to have been embarrassed that he got caught up the story.
In 2011, the FBI made several documents available to the public in their online “Vault” -- including a report regarding the Roswell incident.
The FBI report from the Cincinnati office dated July 8th reads, in part, that they were told via telephone “an object purporting to be a flying disc was re covered near Roswell, New Mexico...The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by cable, which balloon was approximately twenty feet in diameter. [Redacted] further advised that the object found resembles a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, but that telephonic conversation between their office and Wright field had not borne out this belief...No further investigation being conducted.”
Renewed Interest
While interest in what soon came to be known as “the Roswell Incident” died down for many years after 1947, enthusiasm for UFO and alien sightings spread -- not just around the US, but also, around the world.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were a slew of well-received films (like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) as well as a growing list of books published about aliens and UFOs.
By this time, stories of government cover-ups of alien life and conspiracies about practically every top-secret government property abounded -- in particular, regarding Area 51.
Interest in the 1947 Roswell incident -- and the supposed conspiracy around it -- was renewed decades afterward, thanks in large part to Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and leading UFO researcher.
In 1978, Friedman was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana doing an interview when he learned that Jesse Marcel, the retired intelligence officer who investigated the debris in 1947, lived nearby.
That year, the National Enquirer also ran a story about Marcel’s claims of handling materials from a UFO crash.
Friedman talked with Marcel and asked him about his investigation; supposedly, Marcel told Friedman he still believed that the debris he dealt with that day was from an alien spacecraft.
This sent Friedman on the hunt to interview more witnesses, both civilian and military, and review all of the information available on the incident.
Friedman went to Roswell to speak with Walter Haut, the public information officer who had issued the July 8th press release quoting Marcel.
Friedman concluded that there had been a massive cover-up -- a “cosmic Watergate” -- surrounding the Roswell incident of 1947.
In 1980, a book titled The Roswell Incident, co-authored by Charles Berlitz (who also famously wrote about The Bermuda Triangle) and William L. Moore, was published. The book covers interviews with people who said they were first- or secondhand witnesses to the event, and that there had been a number of strange occurrences in Roswell following the incident.
Friedman’s work, along with the publication of this book, reignited the country’s awareness of the Roswell Incident and shed light on the conspiracy theory surrounding it.
Other UFO researchers of note, including Donald Schmitt and Kevin Randle, also say they’ve conducted interviews with civilian and military people who claim to have knowledge of strange happenings in the town.
Project MOGUL
As it turns out, there actually was a (smaller) cover-up happening -- but it had nothing to do with extraterrestrials.
In September 1994, a report released by the US Air Force stated that what Brazel found on the ranch in 1947 was most likely the remains of a balloon, but it wasn’t a regular old weather balloon.
This balloon was part of a then-top secret program called Project MOGUL.
Project MOGUL was conceived of by Dr. Maurice Ewing at Columbia University; he theorized that, just as underwater microphones could detect sound waves produced by explosions thousands of miles away, perhaps an airborne monitoring system could do the same.
Thus, as fears of nuclear war proliferated after World War 2 and the start of the Cold War, the top secret airborne “spying” program was intended to detect any nuclear tests carried out by the Soviets.
Project MOGUL’s balloons were tested out at several locations around the US and in the Pacific.
One of those locations was Alamogordo Army Airfield (now Holloman AFB, NM), which was testing these balloons in the summer of 1947.
Of note, the balloons had radar reflectors made of metal foil on them, which could have given off the appearance of a “saucer”.
However, costs and other concerns about running Project MOGUL brought an end to the operations some time around the end of 1948, before the balloons could ever be used as intended, according to the report.
According to Roger Launius, retired Smithsonian curator of space history and chief historian of NASA, at the time, admitting to a flying saucer may have seemed like a better option than admitting to a classified spying program aimed at the Soviets.
Launius adds that, although the Soviets would not actually acquire a nuclear weapon until 1949, the US didn’t know whether they had one or not in 1947.
Project MOGUL balloons typically measured over 650 feet long and had a tail on which various listening and sensory equipment was attached.
These were launched into the ionosphere -- roughly 50 to 370+ miles above the ground -- where radio waves are reflected.
Launius suggested that the US government’s silence over their various top-secret Cold War and nuclear testing programs was one reason some people continued to believe in a UFO conspiracy.
At many top-secret government properties, severe signage like “Use of Deadly Force Authorized” if caught trespassing serves as a warning but also stokes the flames of conspiracy.
The Roswell Report, 1995
In February of 1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the US Congress initiated an audit (at the request of New Mexico Congressman Steve Schiff, a UFO skeptic) to locate all government records relating to the Roswell incident and determine if these records were handled properly.
A lengthy report was published by the US Air Force in 1995 title The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert.
It is now all declassified and available online (at the link above). It includes several pictures of Project MOGUL’s weather balloons and engineers working on the project.
Several government agencies were involved in the audit, and the Air Force conducted interviews with those who may have had any knowledge of events surrounding the Roswell incident.
Furthermore, those who were interviewed were released from security obligations beforehand that would have kept them from divulging potentially-classified information.
The findings of the audit supported the theory that the debris found in 1947 was from a balloon used in Project MOGUL and found no evidence that aliens or alien spacecraft were involved.
The report mentions that members of the 509th Bombardment Group did have high-level security clearance, but did not know about the existed of Project MOGUL.
Interesting tidbits from the report include: A memo from the Chief of the Air Force Records Management Branch noting that, upon requesting files from the Roswell Air Force Base from the year 1947, it was found that all records from January through October 1947 had been destroyed.
More specifically -- In the GAO’s “response in brief” to Congressman Schiff, they reported that administrative records dating March 1945 through December 1949, as well as outgoing message records dating October 1946 through December 1949, had been destroyed.
According to the brief, the person or organization that had destroyed these files, and the authority under which they had done so, were not indicated
Blanchard went on leave on July 8th, which some Ufologists have found curious at the least, and perhaps even suspicious, considering the large role he was currently playing in a widely-covered story.
Brazel had found weather balloons twice before the “incident” -- but that they looked very different from what he found in June of 1947.
Lt. Col. Cavitt was interviewed and stated that the items he found on the recovery trip with Marcel seemed, to him, to have come from a weather balloon.
Cavitt also identified the materials shown in photos of Marcel and Ramey in Forth Worth as the same materials recovered at Foster ranch.
Also interviewed was Major Irving Newton, the weather officer at Fort Worth who was asked to report to Ramey’s office to view the debris. Newton said he immediately identified the debris as remnants from a weather balloon.
He added that Marcel attempted to persuade him that faded writings on sticks found in the debris were inscriptions of alien writing; Newton says he was not convinced.
The report concludes that Marcel and Blanchard’s original claim of finding a “flying saucer” was in part overreaction, and in part due to the fact that “flying saucer” was a new term that didn’t yet have a clear meaning. Research note -- the insinuation being that, similarly, a UFO is simply “unidentified” but doesn’t technically mean “alien”.
The report concedes that the depth of research some have conducted over the years does add some measure of credibility -- but points out that most of this research is based on verbal reports gathered many years after the event, and a lot of the stories told are second- or thirdhand.
It also points out nobody from Roswell or investigating Roswell has ever produced positive physical or documented evidence to support claims of extraterrestrial ships or life.
Conspiracy theorists maintain that several government documents covering 1947 remain “missing”.
Theory #1: The Government hid aliens
Research Note: There are limitless different versions of this theory; here are some of the more significant pieces and parts:
General Theory
After Friedman’s 1978 interview with Marcel, more and more “witness” testimonies began to emerge.
Seemingly endless versions of the government cover-up theory now exist.
The specifics of this theory vary widely across sources, but the general idea is that the government secured the crash site, recovered all materials (and aliens), and sent them to other government facilities for analysis.
The theory that it’s all a government cover-up to hide the existence of alien life often maintains that the government has gone so far as to issue death threats and other acts of coercion to keep people quiet.
Some also subscribe to the theory that the government has been able to reverse-engineer certain technology, such as fiber optics, from the UFO technology.
Jesse Marcel
As mentioned, Friedman interviewed base intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel, who accompanied Brazel to collect the debris and who traveled to Fort Worth with it and met with General Ramey, in 1978.
Marcel was interviewed several additional times by others as well.
While Friedman had no official tapes or record directly quoting Marcel, the YouTube clips above show Marcel in his later years speaking in his own words.
In the first clip, Marcel says:
“We found a piece of metal about a foot-and-a-half to two feet wide, and about two, three feet long. It felt like you had nothing in your hands; it wasn’t any thicker than the foil out of a pack of cigarettes. But the thing about it that got me is that you couldn’t even bend it, you couldn’t dent it...I knew that I had never seen anything like that before. And as of now, I don’t know what it was.”
He also says, “It was not anything from this Earth, that I’m quite sure of... Being an intelligence officer, I was familiar with just about all materials used in aircraft and/or air travel. This was nothing like that… It could not have been.”
And he also says: “All i could do was keep my mouth shut. And General Ramey is the one who told the newsmen what it was, and to forget about it. It was nothing more than a weather observation balloon. Of course, we both knew differently.” Research Note: I left out a couple words here and there where he stumbled over his words/repeated words back to back.
In the second clip, Marcel is even older; he says, “It was definitely not a weather balloon. It was an aircraft. So what it could have been, I wouldn’t know. I still don’t know.”
While there’s no doubt Marcel saw and handled the debris, there are those who doubt his interpretation of the debris or perhaps his recollection of the exact timeline and details.
According to Marcel’s son, Jesse Marcel Jr., back in July of 1947, his father returned from inspecting the debris in the middle of the night and woke him up.
Showing his son a piece of the debris, Marcel Sr. reportedly told his son the material wasn’t of this earth.
Later, Marcel Jr. said he and his mother were instructed by his father not to speak of what he showed them.
Jesse Marcel Jr. passed away in 2013 -- according to his daughter, while reading a book about UFOs.
The Roswell Incident (book, 1980)
The book (mentioned above), co-written by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, also included included uncredited research by Stanton Friedman.
The authors claimed they carried out over 90 interviews with witnesses.
“Mac” Brazel’s son Bill Brazel reportedly told the authors that the materials his father found that day were too strong to have come from a weather balloon.
Two others interviewed for the book reportedly agreed -- the Brazels’ neighbor, Floyd Proctor, and Walt Whitman Jr., the son of the journalist who had interviewed Brazel.
The book argues that the press was not allowed to closely inspect the debris found on Foster ranch -- and suggests that actual weather balloon debris may have been substituted for the debris Brazel initially found.
Wright Field
Wright Field, now known as Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio -- and in particular, Hangar 18 -- is commonly thought to be where the UFO and aliens from the Roswell incident were transported and housed.
In an affidavit signed in 1991, flight engineer Robert Porter, who was stationed at Roswell, said he was part of the crew that flew Marcel and “parts of what we were told was a flying saucer” to Forth Worth. There, Porter says, the materials were transferred onto another plane that he was told was headed for Wright Field.
Actual reverse-engineering efforts were known to have been carried out there by the foreign technology division at Wright Field.
US Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater reportedly tried to gain access to Hangar 18 and was denied.
He apparently mentioned this several times over the years. No, really. Here he is, talking about it.
According to Goldwater, he contacted General Curtis LeMay, who served as chief of staff of the US Air Force in the 1960s, and asked about secret information stored at Wright-Patterson he’d like to see…LeMay reportedly got angry, cussed Goldwater out, and told the senator never to ask him that question again.
There have been several unverified reports from those who reportedly worked at Wright-Patterson AFB, or who were given access, who say they saw evidence of aliens being kept there.
In particular, a memo surfaced in the early 1980s detailing a September 15th, 1950 conversation between physicist Robert I. Sarbacher, a consultant with the U.S. Department of Defense Research and Development Board, and other government scientists.
In the memo, Sarbacher is said to have worked on a failed reverse engineering project, allegedly stating, “All we know is, we didn't make them, and it's pretty certain they didn't originate on the Earth."
Brigadier General Arthur Ernest Exon was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB in 1948 (at that time, he had a lower ranking). He later returned as commander there from 1964 to 1966.
In 1990, Exon told UFO researcher Kevin Randle that he heard from well-trusted sources involved that Roswell crash materials were sent to Wright Field.
He also mentioned that he’d heard bodies were found at the crash site, still largely intact, and that his strongest information was that one or more of the bodies were also sent to Wright-Patterson.
Exon also recognizes that this secondhand information “may be more rumor than fact”.
Area 51
The government didn’t officially acknowledge the existence of Area 51 until 2013, when the CIA made available information and maps of the hotly-suspected site located about 125 northwest of Las Vegas.
The location of Area 51 was already fairly well-known before this.
These documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
They revealed that Area 51 has been used as testing grounds for the U-2 and OXCART surveillance programs.
There have been a number of alleged UFO sightings around Area 51 over the years.
One theory is that the wreckage and aliens from the Roswell Incident were moved under cover to Area 51.
It’s also a commonly-held belief among these theorists that reverse-engineering projects have been housed in Area 51 over the years to produce technology based off advanced alien tech...
...and that there is a vast network of underground tunnels, as many as 40 levels deep, where the most secretive programs are hidden.
Some think these tunnels may also connect to other cities and bases, like Los Alamos and White Sands.
As information regarding what has gone on at Area 51 over the years has been declassified, more people who once worked there have spoken about projects they say they’ve worked on there.
Tales confirming underground tunnels and reverse-engineering foreign technology don’t mention any evidence of aliens or their spacecraft at Area 51.
And, according to interviews conducted by Annie Jacobsen, the OXCART planes being tested there could have likely been the “UFOs” spotted over the years. Apparently, OXCART planes had a disk-like, titanium fuselage and could travel extremely fast, and over 2,800 OXCART test flights flew out of Area 51.
The Ramey Memo
Since there was such limited documentation related to Roswell in the past, some investigation has focused on what’s called “the Ramey memo”.
The Ramey memo can be found in a photograph of General Ramey from July 8th, 1947, in which he was holding a memo that was partially visible to the camera.
Researchers have struggled to read the small piece of the memo visible in the photograph.
What the memo actually says has been disputed over the years.
There are even rewards offered to the first group or lab that can credibly identify what the memo says.
The photo of the memo was digitized and reviewed by a national-level organization, which concluded on July 20th, 1994, that they weren’t able to see the details of Ramey’s memo based on the quality of the photo.
The photograph, taken in Forth Worth, shows Ramey and Marcel with the debris in photos released with the story stating that the debris had come from a weather balloon and not a flying saucer.
David Rudiak, who traveled to the University of Texas at Arlington to see the photos, claims to have deciphered about 80% of the memo while working with forensic analysts and photography experts.
According to Rudiak, the memo makes a reference to a disc and contains the words “and the victims of the wreck,” which could suggest extraterrestrial bodies recovered from the crash site.
Rudiak’s work on the Ramey memo has met with disagreement from other researchers, but what exactly the memo does say remains unclear.
There were 2 crashes
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French claimed to have knowledge of not one, but two crashes occurring in Roswell in the summer of 1947.
According to French, while he was serving as a pilot at Alamagordo, New Mexico, he was told by another officer that a second UFO was shot down days after the debris was found on the ranch near Roswell, and just a few miles away from that location.
A confidential source apparently told French that an experimental US plane used an electronic pulse-type weapon to stun this second UFO, which then crashed.
French says he and others believed the second UFO was there in an attempt to look for those on board the first craft.
French also claimed he saw photographs of inscriptions on a UFO that were in an unknown language.
Army Colonel John Alexander, who had top-secret clearance in the 1980s, vehemently denies that this could have been possible.
According to Alexander, he was working on developing pulse-power weapons systems in the ‘80s, and no weapons system similar to what French described would have existed in the 1940s.
Theory 2: Human guinea pigs
Another theory maintains that the Roswell incident (as well as other UFO sightings/ crashes) was actually the result of a handful of failed test-flights of military equipment using human guinea pigs.
These flights were allegedly failed experiments in early rocketry and high-altitude exposure.
If true, believers of this theory often say, then it makes sense to allow or even embrace the more popular theory that a UFO crashed in Roswell to distract from the awfulness of what they were allegedly really doing.
UFO researcher Nick Redfern is a leading proponent of this theory and has written a book on the subject.
In 2001, he interviewed a woman who said she had worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where she had seen evidence of human guinea pigs, such as prisoners and disabled people.
Redfern believes the technology being tested was brought over from Japanese and German scientists -- and that those who claim to have seen inscriptions on a UFO written in an “alien” language in the 1940s could have been misidentifying the Japanese language.
Annie Jacobsen, author of Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, presented the theory that the “aliens” found at the Roswell site were guinea pigs, but that the supposed spacecraft was actually part of a thwarted, evil plot perpetrated by Stalin and a Nazi surgeon.
Jacobsen is an investigative journalist who has conducted many interviews regarding Area 51.
Hoaxes
Alien Autopsy Film (1995)
In 1995, two London producers -- Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield -- released 17 minutes of grainy, black and white footage they claimed showed an actual alien autopsy.
Santilli and Shoefield said they bought the footage from a source they could not name, who had served as a cameraman for the military.
In the film, three presumably government workers in hazmat suits are shown dissecting an alien corpse thought to be connected to the Roswell Incident.
Documentary specials aired showing the footage; one airing pulled in 11.7 million viewers.
For a decade, controversy flourished over whether the film was real or not, although the consensus began leaning toward it not being real.
In 2006, the British journalist Eamonn Holmes aired footage of Santilli admitting the footage was fake -- that he and Shoefield had built a set and hired actors.
However, Santilli maintained that the film was based off “real” footage of an alien autopsy he had seen once but was unable to purchase at the time.
Santilli likened faking the footage to “restoring a work of art like the ‘Mona Lisa’”.
Majestic-12
Around 1984, documents surfaced concerning an alleged top-secret committee created in 1947 by President Truman to manage UFO and alien investigations and enforce strict secrecy -- called Majestic-12, aka MJ-12.
The origin of these documents isn’t clear; one story goes that a producer was sent a mysterious roll of film in the mail, and the pictures developed showed images of the top-secret documents -- including mention of the recovery of aliens.
Majestic-12’s supposed duties included recovering wreckage and bodies from Roswell and other crash sites.
MJ-12 appeared in The X-Files, often thwarting Mulder and Scully.
One of the alleged 12 members of this committee is said to be Dr. Detlev W. Bronk, a neurophysiologist and, later, president of Johns Hopkins University. Some believe Bronk led a small team of physicians in performing medical examinations on aliens.
The documents were determined to have been fabricated.
Nowadays, even some avid Roswell and UFO researchers discount the MJ-12 theory as outdated or overplayed.
Some believe the documents were leaked in a deliberate attempt to spread disinformation in order to cover up their theories of what really occurred at Roswell…
Washington: Congressman Steve Schiff today released the General
Accounting Office (GAO) report detailing results of a records
audit related to events surrounding a crash in 1947, near
Roswell, New Mexico, and the military response."The GAO report states
that the outgoing messages from Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) for
this period of time were destroyed without proper authority.
Schiff pointed out that these messages would have shown how
military officials in Roswell were explaining to their superiors
exactly what happened...It is my understanding that these outgoing messages were
permanent records, which should never have been destroyed. The
GAO could not identify who destroyed the messages, or why." But
Schiff pointed out that the GAO estimates that the messages were
destroyed over 40 years ago, making further inquiry about their
destruction impractical.”
FROM THE BOOK: Witness to Roswell by Thomas J Carey and Donald R Schmitt
Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Capt. USN [Ret.], Apollo astronaut, founder of IONS: “This book is the closest to the truth about the Roswell Incident you will ever stumble upon. What you have been seeking is the true story, the facts, the reality that the government withholds from you. I urge you, by all means...read on!”
Page 25 highlight
Page 28-29
Brazel finds wreckage in early july, he asks neighbors about the wreck cause it’s blocking his sheep, he rides into town on July 6 to talk to wilcox, wilcox directs him to a reporter Frank Joyce via the phone, he admits over the phone to joyce the gravity of what he saw, Joyce recommends Brazel contact the air base in town, After reporting to what he heard to Jud Roberts, Roberts gets a hold of Brazel to tape an interview at Walt Whitmore’s house on July 7 to be broadcasted the next day, marcel and Cavitt report back what they’ve seen initiating the shutdown, Roberts is warned by T.J> Slowie the exec sec of the FCC that the interview should be canned or they would lose their broadcasting license, July 8 hours after the UFO press release General Ramey explains it all away as delusions and simply a weather balloon, meanwhile brazel is detained for several days, one of these days, July 9, he is escorted to various media outlets to retract his claims, Joyce encounters brazel at work at KGFL escorted there by military where brazel denies everything, Joyce confronts and Brazel reveals he’s being coerced, later that day a story is published on the Roswell Daily Record where brazel changes his story, after these events brazel is released and purchases a new car and moves away. Pg 53 - 58 interviews with the brazel family and Frank Joyce, also pg 66
Blanchard strangely goes on leave after the holiday weekend as this is all heating up pg 67
Quote from daughter bessie is from her interview, and shirley brazel (bill’s wife) on Mack’s mistreatment when detained (no phone calls) pg 68 Does mogul warrant this treatment?
“My dad was never the same” - Bill Brazel pg 71
Foster daughter of Colonel Hunter G. Penn, an Army Air Force Officer says that her father was tasked to guarantee an “information blackout” with a focus on the little bodies. He was told to hone in on “simple types” such as ranchers and farmers and that physical force including weaponry was acceptable to block the spread of information. He also confirmed that the crash was extraterrestrial.
All the materials of the mogul balloon were still identifiable by common people, 73 and 76
Important to note that Mack Brazel only mentions a weather balloon AFTER the Ramey Press Release, in his interview published on july 9th, even still he says, “It was not any type of weather balloon. That, I’m quite sure of.” pg 67
Quote from Bessie on something her father told her in the heat of everything, “Dad told us that the authorities would probably use him to hide all this from the people...Don’t believe everything you read in the papers about your dad over the next few days.” pg 79
Marcel never publicly commented on bodies but family members have gone on record to say that he spoke of them, calling them “pygmy” and “white powdery figures” Though his son never mentioned anything. A tech sergeant in Marcel’s intelligence team also went on record to say that marcel spoke of the bodies, as “white, rubbery figures”. Pg 82-83
New Mexico’s 32 year old lieutenant governor, Joseph Montoya, apparently recounted to his friends Pete and Ruben Anaya, seeing “four little men” being carried into the hangar, and that “one was alive!” He described them as “skinny with big eyes shaped like tear-drops, mouth was real small...they had large heads” He also mentioned they had pale white skin. Montoya went on to be a US senator in the 1970s and one of his staff who worked with Montoya for 10 years asked if it was all true, “he said that it was, but that if I ever told anyone, he would deny it.”
Chapter 11: Multiple eyewitnesses claim to see a large metal oval shaped object being transported under tarp on the flatbed of an 18 wheeler driven through town. The object originates from the second crash site (seems excessive for a weather balloon)
Having read the SHITLOAD of testimonies in this book from military personnel ranging from high to low level, it’s clear that people knew something big was being hidden and in many cases they were threatened to keep quiet and not inquire further. The only variance was whether they had seen it for themselves or heard it from others, but what’s telling is the message stayed the same. One thing is certainly, obvious, nobody thinks it was a weather balloon…
I’ve read several descriptions of witnesses, who unless they are all coordinating, have given the same physical description of the bodies. Which i find to be interesting.
Interestingly a photo taken on that day with Ramey, Marcel, and the materials also contains something referred to as the Ramey Memo, a memo Ramey is holding in his hands, that some speculate holds the real truth. To this day nobody can definitively decipher what it reads, even with modern digitization. David Rudiak, who traveled to the University of Texas at Arlington to see the photos, claims to have deciphered about 80% of the memo while working with forensic analysts and photography experts. Rudiak claims the memo makes a reference to a disk, and contains the phrase, “and the victims of the wreck.”
Things Micki could confirm from the Google book preview of this book:
The authors claim they’ve talked to more than 600 witnesses
Around pg 48 they talk about Brazel getting advice from neigbors between July 4th - 7th, many of whom claim they saw the crash materials, about what to do regarding the mess since he couldn’t get his sheep to cross it to get to water
This thin metal is referred to in the book as “memory metal”.
It’s very thin, light, can be crumpled but then return to original shape, color of aluminum; couldn’t be cut, scratched, or burned
Around pg 58 the authors recount Frank Joyce’s story and recreate the conversation he says he had with Mac Brazel over the phone
Joyce tells them he did not speak about Roswell for 20 years
Pg 57: According to Brazel’s neighbors, he purchased a new pickup truck, left his job at Foster ranch, and started his own business in Alamogordo after these events, which they found suspicious.
From Ryan’s “Witness to Roswell” Kindle book:
Multiple descriptions of the aliens as being small (about 4 feet) with large heads, large eyes, and small mouths that looked like a slit
After Frank Joyce talked to Mac Brazel on the phone (the recreated conversation), Joyce tells his boss Walt Whitmore, who invites Brazel to come to his house to tape his story -- but according to Mac’s son Bill Brazel, Mac was then taken into custody by the military and subjected to questioning without access to a phone.
During this time, the radio station gets two phone calls (from the exec secretary of the FCC and from a US Senator, Dennis Chavez), urging them not to air any of Brazel’s story; according to Chavez’s assistant at the time, now General Michael Rexrold, they complied.
Brazel was then paraded around to the 2 Roswell newspapers and 2 Roswell radio stations by the military to recount his story.
Meanwhile, according to more than one interview in the book, the government went through people’s homes supposedly looking for materials that had been taken from the debris field, and threatening them to comply.
According to the foster daughter of Colonel Hunter G. Penn, an Army Air Force Officer, her foster dad once confided in her that he was a part of this and had been told to resort to physical force with the use of weapons to get people to comply if necessary. The term she apparently used was “information blackout.”
Lt. Col. Joe Briley, on Blanchard’s staff at the time, has said that Blanchard going on leave right after the incident was a cover; he was actually back at the debris field overseeing operations.
Haut’s “deathbed” confession includes:
Attended briefing with Blanchard, Marcell, Cavitt, et al on the morning of July 8th
Saw and handled “memory metal”
Saw two bodies (the size of 10-year-olds, with large heads) and their ship in a hangar on RAAF
Marcel told him the pieces he was photographed with in Ramey’s office had been switched out and that they were not the original pieces he had come in with, and that he was very upset about it
Tech Sergeant Herschel Grice, who was on Marcel’s intelligence team, said Marcel told him he saw “white, rubbery figures” he believed were alien bodies.
Miriam Bush was a secretary at the military hospital on RAAF to one of the administrators there.
According to her family members, she came home one night crying and recounted seeing a number of alien bodies, one of which moved.
There were other reports of there being one living alien.
According to her sis-in-law Patricia Bush, Miriam called her in 1989 the day before her death, acting paranoid and believing somebody was watching her. Her death was ruled a suicide by suffocation with a bag over her head. Miriam’s family says there were scratches and bruises found on her arm.
There is a whole chapter devoted to “deathbed confessions” including Major Edwin Easley’s, but his involves his granddaughter holding up a Roswell book to a literally dying man who then supposedly says “Oh… the creatures!” which the authors incorrectly count as a “confession”.
There have been two recent digs at Foster Ranch, one in 2002 and another in 2006.
From the 1997 Air Force report titled “The Roswell Report: Case Closed”
This was reporting on follow-up research subsequent to / addressing some questions from the 1994 report.
It’s 231 pages (not counting the title page)
They mention that “witnesses” came forth in the ‘70s through ‘90s to say there were two other crash sites
Pg 12: “scenarios claim that a disabled alien craft momentarily touched down at the site 75 miles northwest of Roswell, leaving behind parts of the spaceship (material that has been subsequently identified as components of a MOGUL balloon train) to create the original "debris field." The scenarios further contend that the damaged craft again became airborne and flew to its final crash site, at either the location north of Roswell or 175 miles northwest of Roswell on the San Agustin Plains”
The report does suggest that a possible explanation for those who claim they saw bodies in the Roswell desert were anthropomorphic testing dummies, the use of which dates back to 1950. Even though that is years after the Roswell Incident, the report suggests that many witness testimonies got dates mixed up, did not remember dates, or could have condensed timelines in their memories 40 years after the events.
The dummies used starting in the ‘50s were more humanlike than previous test dummies; they actually used a plaster cast of a pilot to design them. (“The result was a proposed dummy that stood 72 inches tall, weighed 200 pounds”)
The report also notes that these dummies with latex or plastic skin were specifically used in the New Mexico desert from June 1954 through February 1959 for high-altitude drop testing, many of which fell from great heights and landed in various parts of the New Mexico desert.
And “a number” of those dummies landed where the alleged spaceship crashes and alien bodies were purportedly seen by witnesses.
And that, when these dummies were located, typically anywhere from 8 to 12 recovery personnel would go to recover them, and some of the recovery operations may have made it look like they were transporting an actual body -- such as the use of a bag similar to a body bag.
Col. John Haynes, the primary briefing officer at the Pentagon briefing in ‘97 when this report was released, told the Chicago Tribune that the time discrepancy between these possible explanations and the ‘47 Roswell Incident is that details and timelines “tend to become compressed”
Archaeological Digs at Foster Ranch:
A 2002 dig sponsored by a Sci-Fi Channel show
Director of Air Force R&D
“In 1946 Major General Craigie became Chief, Engineering Division, Air Materiel Command, Wright Field and later, Director of Research and Development, Headquarters USAF.”
Later became known as Project Grudge and Project Bluebook; started in 1947 and focused on looking into UFO claims
Note -- can’t find evidence this was “founded” by Craigie from a decent source, maybe with more time and a deeper dive -- so just attributed this to Ben Games’ testimony
According to other ufologists, Haut’s signed affidavit was not written by him. It was written by his daughter, Julie Shuster, former director of the International UFO Museum.
Shuster was also the one who gave the affidavit to Carey and Schmitt.
The International UFO Museum was cofounded by Haut.
Haut apparently had signed a different affidavit in 1993, which Forbes asked Shuster about, and which she apparently wasn’t aware of. The earlier affidavit made no mention of Haut ever seeing bodies.
Other notable ufologist Kevin Randle, there are major contradictions and confusion in Haut’s later-in-life statements and interviews. Randle found the affidavit cobbled together and unbelievable.
Stanton Friedman & Don Berliner’s 1992 book Crash at Corona
Frank Joyce: While this story does not seem to follow a clear storyline or make much sense, it generally follows, in a very basic and undetailed way, the story told in the other book.
This book also says there were FCC threats to the radio stations but does not say who from, and that Senator Dennis Chavez also threatened.
Mac Brazel: This book also talks about Brazel being taken into custody, this says for about a week, and was persuaded to recant his story. There were witnesses to his “military detention”.