Do government documents disprove Roswell? By Stanton T. Friedman

It has been fashionable for a number of years for Roswell denyers to claim that
various and sundry government documents PROVE that no alien spacecraft was
recovered near Roswell, NM, in early July, 1947, as claimed in books such as
"Crash at Corona-The Definitive Story of the Roswell Incident" by Don Berliner
and myself. 

Unfortunately, the claims betray a lack of understanding of how security works.
First of all, it isn't enough to have an appropriate security clearance to gain
access to classified documents.   One must also have an appropriate Need-to-Know
for the documents in question. 

For example, when I worked on radiation shielding for aircraft nuclear
propulsion systems at GE, I read and wrote technical reports classified as
Secret Restricted Data. In a classified version of "Nuclear Science Abstracts" I
often found listings for reports about radiation shielding produced for Admiral
Rickover's nuclear submarine program, also classified SRD. However, I could not
obtain them because Rickover wouldn't grant a need-to-know for persons outside
his program.	

A basic rule

Secondly it is a basic rule that one cannot present data of higher
classification in a lower classification report. Philip Klass once tried to say
there was no crash because a CIA UFO document released by the CIA in response to
a lawsuit and subsequent Judge's demand for a file search didn't discuss any
such crash. But the CIA document was only listed as Confidential.

Above Confidential there is SECRET, and then TOP SECRET, and then TOP
SECRET-Code word. The latter might include UMBRA, ULTRA, MAJIC. Having a TS
clearance without access to code word material meant one didn't get it.

In addition, while the existence of most classified Research & Development (R &
D) programs is known and only the data is classified, there are also numerous
"Black" programs whose very existence is classified. For example, the Naval
Research Lab first admitted publicly in 1995 that it had launched the first
electronic Intelligence Satellite--in 1960. The first public release of
information about Bletchley Park in England where 12,000 people labored long and
hard decoding and translating intercepted German military communications wasn't
made until 25 years after WW II. It was a black program, as was the development
of the U-2, the Stealth Fighter, the SR-71 etc. The Director of Central
Intelligence admitted in 1996 that his annual black budget was $26.6 billion.

Is there any reason to conclude that there is TS Code Word material on UFOs as
part of a black program? In a Jan. 31,1949, FBI document is the following
statement: "This matter [flying saucers] is considered top secret by
Intelligence Officers of both the Army and the Air Force."

In a Nov. 21,1950, formerly TS document from Wilbert B. Smith, head of the
Canadian government's UFO study programs, one finds this comment: "The matter
[Flying Saucers] is the most highly classified subject in the United States
Government." This surely implies TS Code word material is here. So where is it?

None in declassified Blue Book

There is no formerly TS material in the declassified portion of the Project Blue
Book Files. There is an interesting formerly TS UFO sighting report involving US
Senator Richard Russell. There is AIR-A joint Air Force and Office of Navel
Intelligence Report, not giving a full history of highly classified UFO
activities, but intended to focus only on the implications of whether UFOs
represented Soviet craft.

It is not uncommon for task forces to be set up to independently look at
different aspects of the same problem. For example, Operation Solarium involved
lots of high level military and civilian personnel divided into three separate
groups in 1953. Each was tasked to look at a different approach to containment
of the Soviet Union. These efforts, under the overall Direction of Dr. (General)
James H. Doolittle, set US foreign policy for many years. The reports were not
released (lightly censored) until after 1980, and aren't noted in any earlier
histories of the time.

Can the US government lie to protect its secrets? Of course; it has to. For
example, the government had to say something when a number of people observed
the first nuclear explosion in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, from a distance of
more than 100 miles. A press release stated that an ammunition dump had blown
up, and fortunately nobody was injured.

A favorite of the the Roswell Denyers is the SECRET September 23,1947, memo from
MJ-12 member Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then head of the Air Materiel Command at
Wright Field in Ohio. It notes

"h.(2) The lack of Physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits
which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects." Doesn't this prove
there was no crashed saucer? Of course not.

Top Secret-code word required

Everything about a crashed saucer would have been TOP SECRET Code Word and could
NOT have been mentioned in a lowly SECRET Memo. This memo does give a hint in
that Twining listed the following groups among those that should be on the list
for future flying saucer info distribution: Atomic Energy Commission, JRDB
(Joint Research and Development Board), NACA (National Advisory Committee on
Aeronautics, RAND (Technology Think Tank) and NEPA (Nuclear Energy for the
Propulsion of Aircraft). All of these were connected with technology. All had
links to Dr. Vannevar Bush, also named in the Eisenhower Briefing Document, and
logically so, as a member of Operation Majestic 12. 

McCoy report

Another favorite of the doubting Thomases is a statement in the SECRET report on
a briefing by Wright Field's Col. McCoy to the large USAF Scientific Advisory
Board which comments about the absence of physical evidence. Does this prove
there was no crash? Of course not.  Even if McCoy knew there had been one, he
couldn't say so in a SECRET BRIEFING. 

Another example comes from a study I did while at Aerojet General Nucleonics for
the Foreign Technology DIV of the USAF at Wright Patterson AF Base. I issued two
reports. One was an unclassified bibliography of Soviet technology that might be
useful in building compact reactors for space applications. It made no mention
at all of the highly classified report in which I evaluated the work, and, as it
happens, successfully predicted the Soviets would be launching reactors for
space applications.

Karl Pflock (Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe) mentions the
two TS reports noted above and lists a bunch of others which he claims show
there was no Roswell crash, even though they were almost all only SECRET. Not
even TOP SECRET and certainly not TOP SECRET Code word.

Absence of EVIDENCE is NOT evidence for Absence. The real Roswell Denyer was
USAF Col. Richard Weaver, compiler of the huge USAF 's "The Roswell Report:
Truth vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert." He supplied the fiction. He quoted
this item from a July 8, 1947, FBI Memo. "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}." Even though the report has about 1,000 pages, the brief memo is not
included. Why? Because he left out the comment in brackets. This only reverses
the meaning of the quote!

None available in the archives

Having spent considerable time at a total of 19 document archives, I can say
that none provided formerly TS Code word documents on any subject. The Ike
Library mentioned it had a drawerful. The JFK Library had 10 drawers full.

In a real deception, the National Security Agency claims it finally released in
1996 the 156 TS Code Word "UFO documents" withheld even from Federal Court Judge
Gesell in 1980, because of Sources and Methods info. They lied. All but 1 or 2
lines on each page were censored using white-out instead of the black ink used
to obscure the TS Code Word Affidavit given to the judge justifying the
withholding-and which played so well for me on TV.