Fifty Years Of Unanswered Questions by Donald Schmitt
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How could an event such as a UFO crash in 1947 be kept a secret so long? Surely
the real story would have leaked before now, as has seemingly happened to every
government secret in the past twenty-five years. President Nixon himself, with
all his powers and resources, wasn't able to prevent Woodward and Bernstein from
uncovering the Watergate conspiracy.

Secrets surely do leak but some secrets don't for long periods of time. Consider
these instances:

1) The F 1 17 Stealth fighter, aircraft, was developed in secret and was flying
at a time when the public was told the aircraft was still on the drawing board.

2) Project Ultra, the Allied Word War II project that allowed us to break the
codes of the Germans and thereby hasten their defeat, was a secret for almost
forty years until revealed in the early 1980s.

3) Only recently have the numerous military accidents with nuclear devices been
disclosed, not because of a desire by the government to admit the truth, but
because of the dedicated probing of a civilian organization.

So it is certainly true that the government can keep secrets, but to what
lengths are officials preparing to go to enact a cover-up? Consider this one
instance from an event that occurred during World War II. The Boeing Airplane
Company was then secretly developing the B-29 bomber for the Army Air Force at
its main plant near Seattle. On February 18, 1943, a prototype B-29 caught on
fire during a test flight and crashed in Seattle onto a meat packing plant. The
plane actually passed over downtown Seattle during its rapid descent. All
members of the crew died, along with several employees of the plant and some of
the firemen who fought the blaze that engulfed the plane and plant.

Thousands of people saw the plane coming down and the subsequent fire and rescue
efforts. Did the story of the crash of a secret aircraft go out over the wires
that same day, with accounts from these many witnesses? Although it seems
unlikely, the FBI succeeded in preventing any but the most garbled information
from leaking out. FBI agents went so far as to intercept all copies of City
Transit Weekly, an employee newsletter that carried photos of the plane taken by
a Seattle city bus driver.

So the government does keep secrets, and it will take extreme measures to
protect those secrets in matters of national security. Could the Roswell event
have been sufficiently important to warrant such treatment? We think so, and so
must two men, one still living, whom we have interviewed.

The Provost Marshal at the Roswell base, the equivalent of the chief of police,
was in charge of all security at the crash site in 1947. When we located and
then contacted him in late 1989, it was the first time anyone had extensively
questioned him about what had occurred. The Provost Marshal did not tell us the
weather balloon cover story, nor did he give us a true account of the Roswell
recovery. Instead, he told us that he considered himself still sworn to secrecy
about the event -- after forty-three years!

The second fellow we interviewed was an agent in the Counter-Intelligence Corps.
He accompanied another intelligence officer on the initial trip to the crash
site and, we believe, wrote a report on the incident for his superiors in
Washington. At first, this intelligence agent refused to admit that the event
had occurred at all! There had been no newspaper story, no fuss, not even the
recovery of a weather balloon. After much prodding, he was willing to admit that
something came down and was recovered, but that was as far as he would go. He
admits no personal involvement, even though other reliable sources give him a
central role. Now, he is considered the number one witness for the Air Force,
endorsing their Mogul balloon theory.

We admire how seriously these gentlemen took their oaths of secrecy for almost
fifty years, but we must raise this question: Why the need to conceal the
recovery of a weather balloon?

The government cover-up extends to the public records of the Air Force UFO
investigation as well. Those records were released in 1976, and the file on
Roswell contains but a single press clipping. No letters, no notes, no
investigative forms, no official weather balloon explanation, nothing but that
lone clipping. The file for the recovery of an actual weather balloon in
Circleville, Ohio, a week before the Roswell event, contains far more
documentation on its particulars.  Where is the material that should be in the
Roswell file?

The evidence presented here, and that which will be shortly discussed
establishes that the Roswell crash was one of those events that had to be kept
secret by whatever means were necessary. Files and notes were confiscated from
reporters, 71 radio stations were warned not to air stories, a phony story was
concocted, and men were sworn to secrecy.

As you can well imagine, it has not been an easy task to reconstruct what
actually occurred in July of 1947. Many of the men (and the few women) involved
are now dead, and those living are quite old. Human memory does not record
events with complete accuracy, especially after years have elapsed. As Kevin
Tierney has explained in his book How to Be A Witness, when someone has been
asked to recount his memory of an event several times, "For the most part what
he says will be the same, but there will generally be minor discrepancies
between his recollection on one occasion and the next." This is certainly true
for the accounts we have gathered concerning Roswell, and the natural errors
that creep into an individual's memory mean that some inconsistencies exist in
the testimony you	 will read. Nevertheless, the general pattern of events we
have recorded from essentially all the witnesses does fit one consistent
picture.

As those above the age of five at the time of President Kennedy's assassination
can relate, the moment when they first learned of that gruesome event is
permanently etched in their minds -- a snapshot memory. Several of the Roswell
witnesses have compared their memories of the 1947 event to that of the
assassination: the Roswell memories are vivid and detailed, despite the passage
of fifty years.

Government secrecy is not always something evil and unjustified. We understand
and support the practice of secrecy as it applies to certain types of
information. Some information should remain hidden, such as nuclear firing
codes, court records, police files, and information about the intelligence
agents working undercover, but records documenting the recovery of a weather
balloon hardly merit such treatment.

What could have happened so long ago at Roswell to cause former intelligence
officers to abide by their oaths of secrecy today, even though previous accounts
of the recovery have been published and broadcast? What kind of event required
such high levels of security that the intelligence officer who participated in
the initial recovery of the debris, and who was entrusted with the task of
taking some of the debris to higher levels of command, was not allowed to read
the written report upon his return. What caused the military to place the ranch
manager whom reported finding the debris under house arrest? Why have the
military records of men involved with the crash remains disappeared? Why,
indeed?

If the crash and retrieval of a UFO in New Mexico in 1947 actually happened,
shouldn't there be other reliable reports from other reliable sources since
then? The answer is yes, if the statement is true. There should be many good,
reliable reports from solid citizens, from men and women whose credentials are
impeccable. Men and women who have nothing to gain by claiming they saw a flying
saucer. And some of those sightings should have been made by highly respected
sources.

General Michael Rexrold said that he viewed Chester Lytle as one of the great,
unsung heroes of this country. Lytle was a key player in the Manhattan Project
and developed the radio commands that detonated the first atomic bomb dropped on
Japan.

In the years that followed, Lytle served in government designing and engineering
communication systems for the old Atomic Energy Commission. The military called
on him many times for secret projects at different bases across the country.

Lytle is, therefore, one of those impeccable sources. Lytle said that while he
was on assignment at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the late 1950s, the base
suddenly went on alert. Lytle and a number of officers were escorted to a
special radio room in the operations building. Inside, while the military
personnel worked, Lytle watched an intercept on a small television monitor.

According to Lytle, one of the jet interceptors was equipped with a television
camera in the gun camera position. He was transmitting the intercept to the
operations radio room. In the clear daylight, Lytle watched a smooth, metallic
disk play cat and mouse with the lead fighter. For a moment, Lytle thought he
had to be watching some kind of science fiction movie, but there was no doubt
that the intercept was real. Everyone around him acted as if the event was
routine. Then, suddenly, the UFO disappeared, leaving the interceptors far
behind it.

Afterward, Lytle was told by the base commander that this type of activity was a
regular event, not only at Wright-Patterson, but at other Air Force bases as
well. In fact, over the years, Lytle had heard numerous, similar accounts from
both military officers and governmental officials.

Today, Lytle, who is the president of a telecommunications company, is adamant
about what he knows to be the truth. What he witnessed defied all conventional
explanation. He faces the same problem that researchers face - lack of physical
evidence. While it is true that all efforts by civilian researchers have yielded
no tangible proof, it is also true that Roswell demonstrates that the 'nuts and
bolts' evidence does exist. For the first time the 'smoking gun' has been found.
It has been documented.

With the Roswell case, the enigma of UFOs is no longer spurious or abstruse.
Answers, though known only by a select few, are still being withheld. However,
we can now, in total confidence and conviction, direct the public to the
undeniable source of the proof. Proof which would enable us to finally lift the
veil of secrecy that surrounds Roswell. Put aside all political agenda, all
preconceived opinions, all bias, and consider the following:

* If the debris originated from a top secret test, why was there no recovery or
search operation under way until Brazel reported the debris to Sheriff Wilcox
two after the find? An aerial search over open range and high desert would have
taken only a few hours to locate any downed object. This has been confirmed by
retired military officers, who were involved in actual search and rescue
missions in New Mexico. We, too, have flown private planes over the Brazel site.
Given that the debris field was three-quarters of a mile long, a search and
recovery team would have located it long before Brazel did.

* Weather balloons had fallen onto Brazel's ranch on a number of occasions, and
he turned them in for the rewards offered. In 1945, he discovered the remains of
a Japanese Balloon Bomb which he reported. This time, however, he was angry
because of the amount of debris. His sheep would not cross the pasture because
of the material. It is interesting to note that weather balloons are still
dropping on the ranch. The current owners store them in an old silo. One large
balloon, about twenty feet in diameter, took one man two minutes to retrieve it.

* After examining samples of the material, why did Brazel's neighbors encourage
him to report the crash as physical evidence of a flying disk and not for the
five dollar balloon reward?

* How did highly trained and experienced military officers, the elite in their
fields, mistake a conventional weather instrument for an object they all,
without exception, concluded to be an actual flying disk? Those who believe that
it was a special radar reflecting balloon have said that the men, Blanchard,
Marcel, and all the other officers at Roswell were not familiar with the
specialized equipment. Marcel, however, had a radar interpretation officer
assigned to his office. He would have been able to recognize the balloon, even
if the others were fooled.

* What type of balloon could scatter debris over an area three-quarters of a
mile long and could make a 500 foot gouge in the tough New Mexican soil of
mostly shale and slate stone.

* What type of balloon would fill a 1942 Buick convertible, a jeep carryall box,
and then require fifty to sixty troops two days to complete the cleanup?

* Why did the military check the site for possible radiation if the downed
object was nothing more than a common weather balloon?

* After he was found at the home of Walt Whitmore Sr. on the morning of July 8,
why was Brazel held in detention at the base for another seven days? According
to Brazel, he was not allowed to place any outside calls, not even to his wife.
He was also given a physical examination. His family and neighbors remember that
he later complained how he had been asked the same questions over and over, and
that he described the experience by saying he "was in jail."

* Why the need for extreme security measures at the crash site of a downed
meteorological instrument? Measures such as: armed guards surrounding the inner
gouge area, another cordon around the perimeter, riflemen posted on the
surrounding hills, and MPs stationed on the outlying roads.

* Why was Bud Payne, a hired hand at one of the neighboring ranches, bodily
removed from the Brazel ranch during the military occupation of the site? As
Payne was attempting to round up a stray cow, a military jeep roared up to him
and an MP physically forced him off the ranch. 

* Why were there seven confirmed (possibly eight) flights to transport the
remains of a balloon? Most of the wreckage was flown out under high security.