In article <zAs3b.1867$wY3.112@news02.roc.ny>, Hugh says...

Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A. wrote:
Maybe it isnt closed. But your mind sure is!

Hughe/Sucke,  please refrain yourself from posting your
brand of garbage in this newsgroup.  Even Anal-Sham and
Patty gives it a rest from time to time!!  I'm sure if you
tried, you can find something useful to do.  What is it
you debunkers do anyway, that special thing
with barn-yard animals, or go cruise steam-rooms
with your very special buddy Wider-Sham!! 

No matter, your knowledge on this subject is zero,
so please leave before the debunkers lose that
1% credibility they still cling to!!  Time-compressed
crash-test dummies!  Right!?!>!>!?!?!?!?!@#$%^**()_
- - - -
ROSWELL IS DEAD: LONG LIVE ROSWELL by Bruce Maccabee

Roswell is dead. That's what you will be hearing soon thanks to a new document
recently obtained by researcher Bill LaParl. This document is the minutes of a
meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Air Force on 17-18 March 1948.
The SAB was (is) a high level advisory committee that was set up by the (then)
newly formed Air Force to provide evaluations of existing science and technology
programs and to propose new ones. The meeting consisted mostly of presentations
or briefings by people working in these various programs. The presentations were
not of a technical nature, although some details of the technologies were
mentioned, but rather of an organizational or bureaucratic nature, such as how
successful a program might have been or how to improve its efficiency, how to
improve the morale or the workers. The board was formed under the authority of
General Hoyt Vandenburg, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and was chaired by Dr.
Theodore von Karman.   The meeting was held at the classified Secret level. 

The March 1948 meeting would be of little interest to ufologists except for one
thing: as a part of the discussion of technical intelligence activities at
Wright Field (Wright Patterson Air Force Base) the presenter, Col. Howard McCoy,
mentioned Project Sign. To put this brief mention into perspective, note that
out of some 260 pages of transcript about 34 were devoted to a discussion to the
acquisition and use of technical intelligence. One third of a page contains the
discussion of Project Sign, which had been set up about two months earlier at
the Air Materiel Command (at Wright Field) under the direction of General
Craigie (who attended this Board meeting). 

Col. McCoy, who was the director of intelligence at the AMC, interjected the
following statements into what otherwise could be called a "plain vanilla"
briefing on technical intelligence activities: 

"We have a new project -- Project Sign -- which may surprise you as a devlopment
from the so-called mass hysteria of the past summer when we had all the
unidentified flying objects or discs. This can't be laughed off. We have over
300 reports which haven't been publicized in the papers from very competent
personnel, in many instances -- men as capable as Dr. K. D. Wood, and
practically all Air Force, Airline people with broad experience. We are running
down every report. I can't even tell you how much we would give to have one of
those crash in an area so that we could recover whatever they are."

After making this brief statement, McCoy went on to other "plain vanilla"
intelligence activities.

So, there you have it.... from the guy who should know.... he hopes one will
crash, with the implication that none has crashed. ROSWELL IS DEAD. 

However, this statement, far from absolving the Air Force, is a double edged
sword. One edge, the Roswell edge, is dull. The other edge, the number of
sightings he mentioned, is sharp... and it cuts into the Air Force's claim that
all sightings that were collected are in the Project Blue Book microfilm record.
First, let's sample the dull edge. 

McCoy expressed a desire for one of these to crash. This could mean (a) none had
crashed, (b) there was a crash but he didn't know about it or (c) there was a
crash and he knew about it, but he lied about it! Option (a) is, of course, a
no-brainer... and unfortunately that's the option that has been grabbed up by
the people who are looking for easy solutions to explain Roswell. Option (b)
can't be ruled out. The technical intelligence branch, T-2, which McCoy headed
(and is mentioned in General Twining's famous letter of Sept. 23, 1947 where he
said saucers were real and not visionary or fictitious and recommended a special
project) might not have been cut in on the Roswell information since they had no
need-to-know in order to carry out the assigned duty, which was to collect and
run down the sighting reports. 
Option (c) is even more cover-up oriented. Clearly not everyone, if anyone, on
the SAB had a need-to-know for information related to crashed flying saucers. We
may assume that such information would have been held only at the very highest
levels of security classification. Hence, speaking at the Secret level, McCoy
couldn't have mentioned crashed information if he did know it. In fact, he might
even have lied at the direction of higher-ups in order to intentionally mislead
any of the SAB members who might get nosy if they thought there really was hard
evidence.

Clearly this situation regarding Roswell can only be resolved when we get the
complete history, including formerly Top Secret material that has not yet been
released. (I am sure that there is some!) Until then.... Long Live Roswell.

Now let's turn to the sharp edge of the sword... McCoy's statement that as of
March, 1948, Project Sign had "over 300 reports that haven't been published in
the papers from very competent personnel..." It is easy to see the discrepacy
here when this number is compared with the master list in the Project Blue Book
catalogue: that list shows a "paltry" 135 or so sighting reports before the
March meeting. That means that OVER 165 REPORTS ARE MISSING FROM THE FILE!!! The
ones that are in the file are quite impressive... but this discovery raises the
question of whether or not the missing 165 (or more) WERE EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE.
Where are these sighting reports? Were they removed from the sighting file
before the file was turned over to Project Grudge when Sign ended in early 1949?


About 5 months later, according to Capt E. J. Ruppelt, the legendary "Estimate
of the Situation" was written by Air Technical Intelligence, quite probably by
Col. McCoy and others working with him. According to Ruppelt, it proposed that
flying saucers were ET craft. This claim was based on sighting reports,
according to Ruppelt. Unfortunately there is no copy of that document still in
existence. Hence we cannot determine whether or not any of the missing 165 (or
more) were used in that Estimate. 

Almost two years after McCoy's statement -- and long after McCoy had been
directed to leave the saucer project -- Project Grudge, the successor to Project
Sign, claimed to have analyzed and explained 244 sightings collected in 1947 and
1948. However, this number of sightings does not include the missing 165 (or
more) (nor does it include most of the sightings in 1949). 

Hence we are left with a real mystery... WERE THE BEST SIGHTINGS REMOVED FROM
THE RECORDS TO PREVENT THE SUCCESSORS TO PROJECT SIGN FROM LEARNING ABOUT THE
BEST TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE?

Col. Taylor provided us with a clue to a sighting that is not in the Blue Book
record, the sighting by Dr. K. D. Wood. (Dr. Wood, born 1898, was a professor of
aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado from 1944-1967. He is
listed in Who's Who for 1972.) Unfortunately, there is no information on Dr.
Wood's sighting.

"This cannot be laughed off.." said Col. Taylor. He was right. No one should be
laughing.