"The Roswell Report: Case Closed" 1997, Caplain  James McAndrew, Headquarters,
Uruted States Air Force. 18$ from GPO.  Reviewed by Stanton Friedman.

This 231 page report is a fitting supplement to 'The Roswell Report: Fact vs.
Fiction in the New Mexico Desert"-1995 by USAF Colonel Richard Weaver, which is
about 1000 pages long (no continuous pagination) and was $52. Weaver certainly
supplied the fiction. Both are almost textbook examples of propaganda: Selective
choice of data; serious errors of omission; intentional acts of deception; and
gross inconsistency within different parts and with truth. My comments are based
on my investigation of the so called Roswell Incident which began in 1978 with
my conversation with Major Jesse Marcel.  Major Marcell was the intelligence
Officer of the 509th composite Bomb Group, stationed in 1947, at what was then
known, before the USAF became a separate portion of the Defense Department, as
Roswell Army Air Field.

I was the first talk to many of the key witnesses, and have written numerous
papers about Roswell. I also was a major contributor to the first book "The
Roswell Incident", was co-author (with Don Berliner) of the 3rd book about
Roswell "Crash at Corona", and sole author of TOP SECRET/MAJIC.  TOP
SECRET/MAJIC is a detailed report of my investigations of the Operation Majestic
12 documents, based on visits to 15 Archives (now 17). I am convinced that some
are genuine and the most important classified documents ever leaked to the
public. I had been referred to Marcel by an old ham radio buddy of his who had
seen the original 1947 article, not, as falsely claimed by Weaver, by a 1978
National Enquirer article (which was actually published in 1980).

I have dealt in detail with some of the lies and misrepresentations of Colonel
Weaver in my September 26, 1994, 28 page paper "The Roswell Incident, the USAF,
and the New York Times" (included elsewhere in this volume) and in TOP
SECRET//MAJIC. The focus here will be on the McAndrew opus. This volume clearly
illustrates that there is much less here than meets the eye. Many pictures of
historic interest are included. There is a 27 page list of notes, but still
there are very important omissions and misrepresentations. Many of the
explanations seem to be based on the idea that all witnesses are lying about
just about everything. I have elsewhere enunciated the basic rules for
debunkers: (A) Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up. (B) What the
public doesn't know, I am not going to tell them. (C) If one can't attack the
data, attack the people. (D) Do your research by proclamation NOT by
investigation. It is easier and nobody will know the difference.  Certainly
Weaver earlier, and now McAndrew, have followed these rules.

One must be curious as to why the USAF has come out with so many different
explanations and why there are so many "final claims" about the Roswell crashed
saucer story, 50 years later. On July 8, 1947, a press release authorized by
Colonel William Blanchard, Commander of the 509th and of RAAF, stated that a
flying disc had been recovered. This was big news because there had been well
over 1000 sightings in the preceding two weeks of flying discs, or flying
saucers, in at least 44 states, several Canadian provinces, and a few other
countries. The release went out on the newswires at about noon New Mexico time,
too late for all the morning papers in the USA, but making headlines in many
Evening papers from Chicago west.  A few hours later General Roger Ramey,
Blanchard's boss and head of the 8th Air Force, based in Fort Worth, Texas,
issued a statement (Explanation 2) that the wreckage, some of which had been
brought to Fort Worth by Major Marcel, on Blanchard's orders, was just that of a
weather balloon radar reflector. Ramey's chief of Staff, Colonel Thomas
Jefferson DuBose has, after 1980, made a sworn statement that he had received a
phone call from General Clements McMullen in Washington, DC, Ramey's boss,
telling him in no uncertain terms to cover up the story. Ramey did so around
5PM, Texas time; this was too late for all the US Newspapers, except for the
Sunset edition of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner. The big headline,
page wide, said "Army Finds Flying Saucer." The smaller sub head said "General
Believes It Is Radar Weather Gadget".

The morning papers of July 9 had "Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer". That same day
the Air Materiel Command personnel at Alamogordo (NM) Army Air Field and two
other installations dutifully staged launches for the press of weather balloons
with radar reflectors. Leading to such front page headlines on July 10 as
"Fantasy of Flying Discs Explained Here" in the Alamogordo Daily News.  Also on
July 9th the Roswell Daily Record carried a front-page story "Harassed Rancher
who located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About It." This story has become the basis
for all USAF "explanations" since, despite the fact that there is overwhelming
evidence that it is a cover story with the rancher having been fed it by the
military to get the press off the Army AF's back.

It took until Sept.28, 1994, for the USAF to admit that they had lied about the
weather balloon explanation. They would not have said anything at all, but they
were concerned as to what the Final Report of the General Accounting Office,
about the sought after Roswell paper trail, would say.

The new false explanation (number 3), and still champ, is that what was
recovered was a then supersecret Mogul Balloon train consisting of 93 weather
balloons at 20 foot intervals interspersed with radar reflectors, ballast
containers and sonobuoys to listen for expected Soviet nuclear explosions from a
Mogul balloon train kept at a constant altitude. 

The article notes "a debris bundle consisting of tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks
making a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and 7 or 8 inches thick with the
rubber making a bundle 18-20 inches long and about 8" thick. The entire lot
would have weighed maybe 5 pounds. There were letters on some of the parts,
Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been
used.  No strings or wires were found." The article also claims that the
wreckage had been found on June 14. And was scattered over an area of about 200
yards in diameter.

My paper makes note of the many contradictions between what was in this article
and the truth.  For example, the July 8 articles said Brazel found the wreckage
last week which could hardly be June 14, though the latter matches an earlier
balloon launch date.  There are many witnesses testifying to the fact that the
original descriptions of the material characteristics were altogether different
and rule out a balloon explanation; and that Brazel had been programmed to give
out a new story by the USAF who had taken him into custody. Books have included
supportive testimony given long before the Weaver lies were published, by
Brazel's son Bill, by Marcel's son Jesse Jr., by Brazel's neighbor Loretta
Proctor, by radio station manager Judd Roberts, by Roswell reporter Frank Joyce.
Funny thing is that all of these people are still alive and not one of their
names appears in the index! The first three all actually handled material.

Considering that in 1947 it was a long haul over cross country ruts in a field
and dirt roads to Roswell from the Debris field, one has to ask why would Marcel
and Cavitt go back with Brazel when all this junk could easily have fit in
Brazel's old pick-up truck?  There would have been nothing to see when they went
back.  But Jesse described to me in 1978 an area strewn with wreckage and
hundreds of yards long.  And there would be no reason to go back.  No rancher
would have left junk like this for weeks for his sheep to ingest.  Brazel had
recovered 2 balloons earlier and is quoted in the article,  (though the quote is
intentionally omitted in one of Weaver's misrepresentations).  "I am sure what I
found was not any weather observation balloon." Marcel stated.

McAndrew repeatedly uses the terms "UFO theorists" and "UFO Proponents."  The
only way a careful reader would know that I am a nuclear physicist and that Don
Berliner, co-author of our book "Crash at Corona" is an aviation and science
writer, is that this is mentioned in a newspaper article McAndrew includes from
the Socorro, NM, Defensor Chieftain, about our seeking new witnesses.  He then
proceeds to lie about what happened when Don and I met with the 2 people who
contacted us "Professor Charles B. Moore, a former US Army Air Forces contract
engineer, and Bernard D. Gildenberg. Retired Holloman AFB Balloon Branch
Physical Science Administrator and Meteorologist.  When they met with the
authors their explanations that some of the Air Force Projects they participated
in were most likely responsible for the incident, they were summarily dismissed.
The authors even went so far as to suggest that these distinguished scientists
were participants in a multifaceted government cover-up to conceal the truth
about the Roswell Incident. Do note the qualifications given for the "good
guys".

This is frankly horse manure. Don and I had very cordial separate meetings with
each. We did NOT dismiss them. When we discussed the meetings later with each
other, we did note that neither individual seemed to know any more about what
was observed then what was in the July 9 "Harassed rancher" story and they both
took the same approach of trying to steer us away from a flying saucer
explanation.  Don and I were both aware that Moore had himself had an excellent
UFO observation while using a theodolite tracking a balloon and in the company
of several experienced observers. This incident seems to be ignored in all of
Moore's subsequent testimony supporting standard USAF anti-UFO propaganda.
Standard tool of the propagandists is to give glowing testimonials about the
guys on their side of the question and to use derogatory language with no
mention of professional qualification for the opponents.

A great deal of space is taken up with stories relating to the supposed
explanation for Gerald Anderson's and Glenn Dennis's independent descriptions of
a red haired SOB officer and a black sergeant, out on the Plains of San Augustin
for Anderson and at the base hospital at RAAF both in July, 1947. But McAndrew
never relates how I was the first to hear of these descriptions independently a
few weeks apart.  He never mentions the black sergeant, and brings in another
cover story character, the very distinguished pilot and parachutist Captain
Joseph W. Kittinger. A definite red head at the time. McAndrew gives gory detail
about an accident that happened with a Balloon carrying Kittiner and others
crashing near Roswell and the wounded member being brought to the Base hospital.
Of course, the balloon had a ground escort which was on the scene quickly. Of
course this didn't happen in 1947 or 1948 or even 1949. It happened believe it
or not in 1959! The notion that Kittinger was the red head seen by Anderson out
on the Plains and/or the nasty security man seen by Glenn Dennis at the hospital
is absurd.

The other dummy drops all happened after 1953!  In all cases the dummies were
comparable in size and weight to USAF pilots as the pictures clearly show. The
experiments would have been worthless if the bodies were the size and weight of
small child sized beings. There is a picture of Retired USAF Lt. Colonel Raymond
Madson. I met with Madson in Albuquerque on September 10, 1997, because I had
seen a newspaper article quoting him as being one of the military people heavily
involved in the crash test dummy drops and saying there was no way those dummies
explained the alien bodies. He also was quoted as saying that both he and his
wife had heard independent stories of small strange bodies having been brought
into Wright Patterson Air Force Base years earlier, while they worked there in
the mid 1950s. The colonel was adamant to me about the dummy explanation not
making any sense and about the stories about bodies at WPAFB being true. He also
stressed there was nothing classified about the crash test dummy work. He did do
some work connected with the U-2 project that was so classified that his boss
could not be told what he was doing!

It is interesting that McAndrew used the same map three times "Anthropomorphic
Dummy Launch and Landing Locations" p. 24,68,156. They printed some of the
interview with Gerald Anderson about his experience in the Plains with the red
headed officer, black sergeant and 4 small bodies with 4 fingers big eyes, no
real nose, or mouth or ears, or hair.  But there were no dummy launches or
recoveries anywhere near that location at any time no less in 1947. There were
none near the Brazel debris field either and neither Brazel nor Marcel ever
talked of bodies out there.

Frankly I was astonished when I watched in London, England, part of the
Televised press conference in which the Air Force, on June 24, put forth this
crash test dummy explanation with the little problem of the time travel required
to get the dummies back from 1953, at the earliest, to 1947.  One would almost
think the air force balloon people doing legitimate and important experiments
were looking around for a crashed saucer and making sure they didn't drop any
dummies near them.

Another disturbing feature of this report is the casual way in which small
selected snippets of witness interviews are used such as Barney Barnett's niece,
Alice Knight, and his friend Vern Maltais.  No mention of the testimony of
Vern's wife, of Barnett's neighbor Harold Baca, of Colonel Leed who had visited
Barney and got his first hand testimony about the crashed saucer in the Plains
and the bodies next to it and the intimidation of him by military personnel.

Many people, including numerous Journalists at the 50th Anniversary celebration
the following weeks in Roswell, have asked me why did the USAF do this? Surely
they would have known the public wouldn't accept it.  I think there were several
reasons:

1. The Air Force has been lying about UFOs to the public, the press, and
Congress (as documented in TOP SECRET/MAJIC) for many decades and gotten away
with it. Why stop now? Lying works!

2. They really don't care what thinking people think of their explanations. So
long as the NY Times and the major media buy it, who cares what the public
thinks?

3. There was probably some pressure on the USAF as a result of Colonel Weaver's
silly remark that there need not be any consideration of bodies since Mogul
Balloons didn't carry bodies. One can imagine some bigwig saying "surely we can
do better than that", hence explanation Four.

4. Perhaps some UFO proponent has infiltrated the Air Force and suggested this
utterly inappropriate approach in order to make the USAF look silly�ant it
worked!

Perhaps I should add that many media people in Roswell told me that seeing the
TV Press conference turned them on the Roswell story, not off it. While I was
signing books in Dayton, Ohio, and lecturing at a conference in nearby
Springfield in early September, several different people quietly told me about
hearing of strange bodies at nearby WPAFB when they worked there. A number of
the former Air Force and civilian employees at the base in Roswell told me on
Sept. 12, when I was the speaker to their reunion group, that they just couldn't
accept the dummy explanation.

All things considered, the dummy explanation has probably done more good for
ufology than anything that has happened since the silly USAF swamp gas
explanation about sightings in Michigan in the mid 1960s. What I would really
like to do is a public debate (maybe with Larry King or Ted Koppel as moderator)
between myself together with a professional scientist colleague, and Colonel
Weaver and Captain McAndrew.  On June 27, 1997, the TV "Program Strange but
True" held a 90 minute "debate" with Tim Good, Nick Pope, and myself, versus
professors of physics, astronomy, and psychology. The question was "Do you
believe Earth has been visited by aliens?"  Call this number to vote "yes" and
this one to vote "no". Over 100,000 callers responded; 92% said YES. The studio
audience of 300, voting prior to the program, which included many interviews
with pilots, astronauts, a cosmonaut, debunkers and others, had only a 73% YES
vote. Thank you Captain McAndrew!

Stanton T. Freidman