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Every July 4th weekend, thousands of people flock to Roswell, New Mexico to commemorate

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the anniversary of what they believe is the most important UFO event ever recorded.

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At the International UFO Museum and Research Center, believers pour over hundreds of controversial

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exhibits.

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To believers, the Roswell incident is the mecca.

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It's the rosetta stone of all ufology and alien encounters.

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Researchers are persuaded not by any concrete evidence, but by the stories of eyewitnesses.

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People who claim to have seen a strange crash and alien bodies in the desert more than 50

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years ago.

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I would say the Roswell crash is the most significant event in human history.

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We had an encounter, albeit a very sad one, because the creatures were, with the possible

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exception of one, were dead.

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We had an encounter with creatures from another world.

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But to skeptics, there are plenty of down-to-earth explanations for these fantastic stories.

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The ufologists that really believe something alien happened at Roswell, they've taken

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just bits and pieces of events that did happen and distorted them and constructed around

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them a myth.

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The events that come to be known as the Roswell incident begin in the early summer of 1947,

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a season which would change the town forever.

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Flying saucer reports first started around June 25th of 1947, and almost immediately everyone

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began seeing flying saucer.

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Residents of southeast New Mexico start to see strange things in the sky, things they

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call unidentified flying objects, known as UFOs.

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New Mexico is abuzz with UFO mania and talk of invading Martians.

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Please contact us.

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Please contact us.

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We are your friends.

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Then on July 5th, 1947, something really does fall from the skies near Roswell, landing

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on a field owned by sheep rancher, Mac Brazell.

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He thought he had the debris of a flying saucer, and so on Monday, July 7th, he went into the

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closest town to report his discovery.

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People contact Sheriff Wilcox at Roswell, claiming he has found a flying saucer.

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The sheriff then calls the closest military base, Roswell Army Airfield, located just

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outside of town.

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Roswell Army Airfield is home to the 509th Bombardment Wing, at the time the only atomic

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strike force in the world.

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The Army Air Force reacts quickly, sending two officers the same day to investigate the

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site.

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They check out the crash area and bring the debris to the base.

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At noon the next day, Walter Hout, a public information officer at the base, issues a

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press release announcing the retrieval of a flying saucer.

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To this day, the mystery remains exactly why Hout issues this sensational release, but

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its effect is immediate.

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When Walter's story went out, it was a bombshell.

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All of a sudden, the whole world was hearing this.

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This is about a flying saucer having been retrieved on somebody's sheep ranch.

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A phone calls jam the base switchboard.

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Four hours later, Colonel Blanchard, commander of the 8th Air Force, takes steps to contain

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the frenzy.

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Furious with a commotion, he orders a retraction of the press release.

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The debris is flown to Fort Worth Army Airfield in Texas on orders from the government in

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Washington.

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Here they have chosen the commander of the base, high-ranking Brigadier General Roger

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Ramey as the best person to diffuse the growing hysteria.

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Ramey inspects the wreckage and declares at a press conference on July 8th that it's

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nothing more than the remnants of a weather balloon.

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The bits of wood and plastic are then crated up and flown to Wright Field Army Air Base

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in Dayton, Ohio.

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After this press conference, the public loses interest in the Roswell UFO story.

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No eyewitnesses have come forward claiming to have seen aliens or a crashed flying disk.

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The story fades from memory.

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We have to remember that the Roswell incident was not an incident in 1947.

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I mean, after those initial approaches, the whole thing just died.

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For almost 30 years, stories about a crashed alien spacecraft at Roswell would lie dormant,

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only to surface again later with renewed force.

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When we continue, how the government admits to lying about the real story behind the crash

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near Roswell in 1947.

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It was a research effort.

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It had a very high priority, but the existence of the program was highly classified.

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In 1980, a book written by Charles Berlitz and William Moore called the Roswell Incident

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revives interest in the story about a crashed flying saucer in Roswell in 1947.

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Berlitz is convinced that there must be something more behind the tail of crashed wreckage that

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was so quickly dismissed by the Air Force as a simple weather balloon.

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The book contains interviews with witnesses who have come forward claiming to see incredible

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things at the crash site.

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Now, eyewitnesses claim the government really did retrieve a flying saucer and alien bodies

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at Roswell and has lied about it ever since.

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The alleged cover-up kicks off as soon as sheep rancher Mack Roswell reports finding

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the debris.

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The Army was out there probably before daybreak, the next morning, Saturday morning, picking

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the pieces up, and the story went forward from there.

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More accurately, the lack of story went forward from there because, of course, there was an

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immediate and thorough cover-up.

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Witnesses now describe the crash site as teaming with armed military police who comb over piles

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of wreckage.

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These people say it's clearly recognizable as a flying saucer and injured aliens.

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In the more extravagant descriptions of this event, even President Truman arrives at the

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impact site. There are still a few surviving aliens and there's translators trying to

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dissect what they're saying.

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According to these stories, the alien bodies and parts of the flying saucer are transported

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to a hangar at the Roswell airbase.

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That place, it's kind of a creepy feeling today to go by the building and look in there

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and think, you know, this is where the stuff was brought.

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The bodies and debris are then shipped on to their final destination.

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The bodies, probably all of them eventually ended up, perhaps, by way of Washington, you

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know, going out to ride Patterson in their first place.

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Conspiracy theorists believe the aliens and wreckage reside somewhere in a heavily guarded,

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top-secret government installation.

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Since the first book about Roswell in 1980, many more witnesses have come forward and

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more books written fueling the angry claims that the government is hiding something of

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momentous importance.

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But the government sticks to its 1947 original story of a weather balloon.

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In 1994, Congressman Stephen Schiff of New Mexico responds to pressure from his constituents

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by lobbying the General Accounting Office in Washington to fully investigate the matter.

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Then in 1995, in a document called the Roswell Report, the Air Force finally claims to tell

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the truth that the weather balloon explanation was indeed a cover story.

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This report reveals that a debris found by sheep rancher Mack Brasil came from a top-secret

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U.S. military program.

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Given the codename of Mogul, the military was testing special devices attached to high-altitude

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balloons as a way to spy on the Soviet Union.

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After we used nuclear weapons to end World War II, the American military became very

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concerned that such weapons could be used against us.

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And in view of the knowledge of the Soviet espionage, there was great concern in monitoring

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the development of the Soviet nuclear weapons. As a result, there was great, great pressure

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to get some detection system going.

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The base of operations for Project Mogul is 100 miles southwest of Roswell at Alamogordo

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Army Airfield.

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But the location has one drawback. Clear skies make it hard to conceal the balloon flights.

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As young scientists contracted by the Air Force, both Charles Moore and Duke Gildenberg

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are among the few present at the secret launches.

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The bizarre materials they use could easily mystify a civilian observer.

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For the first time, they acknowledged that there were in fact many secret balloon flights

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in New Mexico in the summer of 1947.

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In that whole period, there was great excitement throughout the United States about flying

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saucers. I'm sure all balloons that were being put up at that time were summarily being reported.

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The balloons in this never-before-released Air Force footage create an optical illusion

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appearing like shiny silver jellyfish in the sky.

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Project Mogul will send aloft a highly classified device ringed with sensitive microphones

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attached to a 600-foot-long string of helium balloons.

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This top-secret payload can acoustically detect atomic explosions, even from the other side

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of the world.

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The Air Material Command, or AMC, headquartered at right field Ohio, coordinates the project.

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It was a research effort. It had a very high priority, but the existence of the program

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was highly classified.

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On June 4th, a mobile flight is launched with target devices attached to the balloon train

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for the crew to monitor the flight path.

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The balloon sails freely over the mountain range towards Roswell. But something goes

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wrong and the tracking signal is lost.

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With no way to locate the balloon, the crew holds little hope of ever finding the classified

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payload.

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Mac Brazl, while working his vast ranch, discovers the wreckage on July 5th.

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Brazl's own description of the wreckage sounds like balloon debris, except for one

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unusual item.

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Brazl himself came right out and said it was tinfoil, scotch tape, balsa, and a few

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other very minor items like that. There was one piece that looked like maybe a hard plaster,

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which turned out incidentally to be the plexiglass cover for the classified mobile payload, but

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it had broken on impact.

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Very soon, this mutates into this unusual material that you ball up and it pops back

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out. Where did that come from? Well, in my opinion, that comes from up here. That comes

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from out of somebody's imagination and the retelling of the story from this original

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kite-like balloon material, which doesn't sound very alien to this other stuff which

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sounds really alien.

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In the Roswell report, the Air Force admits there are grains of truth to some of the new

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stories. Specifically, eyewitness claims that the wreckage is adorned with some kind of

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alien hieroglyphic writing in pink or purple. The mogul target device does in fact have

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a similar appearance.

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It was put together with some tape that had some flower-like, abstract flower-like designs

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that were pinkish-purple in color. Every time I prepared a target for flight, I always puzzled

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what was the function of those flower-like designs.

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It turns out that the company that made the targets used the decorated tape simply because

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it was on hand.

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Over time, the story surrounding the visit by Major Jesse Marcell and Captain Sheridan

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Cabot to the crash site is also dramatically enhanced.

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The devil was in the details, and all the details were wrong. For instance, they described

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Cabot as driving a carrier. No, he never drove the carrier. They said Marcell used a

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Geiger counter. Nobody out there had a Geiger counter. They said they returned with a convoy

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and they never picked up any MPs. None of it ever happened. This is just nitty gritty

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details.

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When you really look into them in the Roswell incident, they're almost never really eyewitnesses.

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They're usually somebody who knew somebody. In my opinion, that's what virtually all of

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these eyewitness accounts are nothing more than these sort of misleading, misremembered,

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filled in the blank, false memories type eyewitness accounts.

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The Air Force's Roswell report doesn't end the controversy. The Air Force would have

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to issue another document to explain why some people believe they saw aliens near Roswell

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in 1947.

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When we continue, how the recovery of crash dummies produced strange sightings around Roswell.

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We were sent over with a helicopter and recovery crews with a number of body bags and packed

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them in the body bags.

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In 1995, the U.S. Air Force tried to put an end to the mysteries of the alleged 1947

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Roswell UFO crash with its official study, the Roswell report.

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This explains how a top secret reconnaissance balloon project most likely accounts for descriptions

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of the unusual materials found on a remote New Mexico ranch.

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But this report does not make any attempt to explain why many witnesses quoted by UFO

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researchers believe they saw aliens.

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Although their descriptions of the aliens vary in details, they do share many characteristics.

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We're generally looking at creatures of a very, very short stature, no more than probably

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three and a half feet. The four-fingered hand seems to be pretty much a point of agreement.

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Additionally, witnesses describe the bodies as having no hair, no eyelashes or eyebrows,

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and no visible ears.

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The heads tend to be described as hair-shaped with somewhat larger than usual eyes, with

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other orifices not very well marked, you know, not much of a mouth, you know, not much of

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ears or nose.

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Witnesses compare the alien bodies to dummies or dolls with expressionless, serene looks

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on their faces.

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They are dressed in something like a one-piece jumpsuit.

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To dispel the myth that the government retrieved aliens at the Roswell crash site, the Air

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Force issues a second document called the Roswell Report Case Closed in 1997.

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This details another secret program, Project High Dive, conducted by the Air Force between

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1954 and 1959.

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High Dive tests a revolutionary parachute that will operate at extremely high altitudes.

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Too dangerous for humans, the first shoots are tested on anthropomorphic dummies.

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We had anthropomorphic dummies that we instrumented, and we could send these dummies to high altitude

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on single balloons, and what the command signal could separate the balloon from the dummy

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and let it free fall and open a parachute at some altitude just to see what data we

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could gather.

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The balloons carrying the dummies are launched from the desert near Holloman Air Force Base

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in southeast New Mexico.

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Although none are launched from Roswell, many dummies land and are recovered close to

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Roswell.

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We would send over the helicopter repair recruits with a number of body bags and pack them in

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the body bags as soon as we got there.

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The dummies are dressed in standard Air Force one-piece flight suits. The sight of them

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could easily alarm the uninitiated onlooker.

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They also describe the dummies in details like saying they had no hair, no ears, the

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mouth did not seem to serve as an opening for conversation or digestion, and on and

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on.

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One witness described an alien body as cold to the touch. This is entirely appropriate

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since the dummies plunge from the stratosphere where they have been subjected to sub-zero

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temperatures. On impact, they are still freezing, even as they lie on the desert floor.

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The recovery crews also use an ambulance converted into a communications vehicle and a type

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of 4x4 truck known as a weapons carrier. These same vehicles are frequently mentioned

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by witnesses as being present at the alien recovery site.

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But conspiracy theorists are not at all convinced that crash dummies explain alien sightings

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around Roswell.

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First of all, the crash dummies are around six feet tall, and compared to these little

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guys we're talking about, these little three and a half foot lithe, thin, you know, very,

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very small figures, I really can't see how anybody could make that mistake.

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Also, the dummy experiments began seven years after the alleged Roswell crash. However,

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the Air Force believes the many similarities between the descriptions cannot be denied.

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But even those who support the Air Force's explanations are not entirely convinced.

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I think it's just the Air Force's attempt to provide some meat here to the story to

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explain it. What else could these aliens be? For most skeptics, they're entirely up

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here. Either they're making it up or they're just had a fantasy and pro and personalities

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they think they saw something. Did they see crash dummies? Maybe.

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The dummies used in Project High Dive cannot explain one important story about an alien

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encounter. A sighting held by conspiracy theorists to be the single most convincing proof that

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aliens did land in Roswell. When we continue, how a pilot becomes grotesquely disfigured

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and mistaken for an alien. But now my eyes are completely swollen,

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shutting head turned black. The star witness for Roswell conspiracy theorists is Glenn

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Dennis. In 1947, Dennis is a mortician at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell. He claims

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that on July 6th, he drives an injured airman to the hospital at Walker Air Force Base just

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outside Roswell. When I arrived there, where I usually parked the

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ammits, there were three old field ammits and they had these two old swinging doors

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and one of them was open maybe 12 or 14 inches or so and I saw a lot of debris in the back

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of it. The debris is unusual and unlike anything he has ever seen before.

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It looked more like maybe what fiberglass would look like today. It was very thin. There

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was a piece that kind of looked like the end of a canoe that was coming up like this.

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But what really got my attention was it looked like it had some maraglifers. Dennis then

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enters the hospital and encounters a nurse named Naomi Maria Self who is highly agitated.

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She tells him to leave immediately. He was in the process of leaving and these

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people accosted him and said, what are you doing here? And he said, well I came out here

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on business and they said, well you're not supposed to be here and in fact he ended up

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being dealt out by that famous threat. If you don't get out of here, you don't keep

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quiet. They're going to be picking your bones out of the sand.

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Dennis says this vicious threat was delivered by an angry red-headed captain. Dennis leaves

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but returns the next day to meet with the nurse. She then tells him of an incredible

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alien autopsy conducted by two doctors in the hospital the day before.

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She said, you won't believe this. She said they had done these crash bags that were laying

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on this iron gurney. It was too very mutilated. She said very, very small bodies. Some of

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them looked like they were almost black.

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The nurse tells Dennis their odor is so overpowering that she and the doctors are forced to abandon

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the autopsy. After his conversation with the nurse, Dennis would never see her again.

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She was shipped out that afternoon after three o'clock one of the nurse officers that I

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knew called me and said that your friend had just been shipped, transferred out.

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The Air Force argues that Dennis's amazing story which has passed firmly into popular

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legend may be nothing more than a confused mix of details from two separate Air Force

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accidents that occurred near Roswell.

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The first accident occurs in 1956. An Air Force aircraft crashes into the desert outside

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Roswell.

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Eleven crew members perish. The crash site is surrounded by MPs to keep the public away

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from the grizzly scene. The black mangled bodies of the crew are taken for autopsy to

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walk our Air Force base.

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Due to the overpowering smell of burnt flesh and fuel, the autopsy is stopped and the body

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is sealed in body bags.

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The bags are then sent to the ballard funeral home in Roswell where proper refrigeration

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is available.

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Dennis, an employee of the funeral home, may have seen the bodies here placed in cold storage.

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The Air Force believes that Dennis's memory of the event may have evolved into this tale

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of an alien autopsy.

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In psychology we call this confabulation where you're mixing real memories with your own

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interpretations of them with fantasies that you've added to it with other people's accounts

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of what they think they saw and all that becomes a genuine memory for you. But it doesn't really

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exist anywhere else other than this one person's mind. Then that becomes the star eyewitness

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account in this Roswell incident when in fact it doesn't really represent anything at all.

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As for the nurse, government records show there was never anyone named Naomi Maria Self stationed

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at Walker Air Force Base and no one by that name ever served in the Air Force.

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Other details of Dennis's experience at the hospital can be explained by an Air Force

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balloon accident. It is related here for the first time on camera by an Air Force officer

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involved in the accident.

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Here is the genesis of the observations by the off based non Air Force people that aliens

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were seen being taken into the hospital at Roswell.

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Since 1954 the Air Force has been testing a special high altitude parachute with anthropomorphic

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dummies. However, research gained from these dummies was inconclusive.

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We reached a point I would say beginning in about 1958, 1958 that we needed now to

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start looking at actual human subjects rather than just dummies.

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This new endeavor, codenamed Project Excelsior, is a risky undertaking. Captain Joe Kittenger,

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a fearless red headed test pilot, volunteers to jump from an open gondola from the edge

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of space at 100,000 feet to test the parachute.

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The training for this dangerous project operates under strict secrecy. Two other pilots, Captain

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Dan Fulgum and Captain Bill Kaufman also prepare for the perilous mission.

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The three intrepid pilots ascend in a special gondola on May 21st, 1959 on a simple low-level

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training flight. But the landing outside Roswell doesn't go according to plan.

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In the gondola dropped to the ground, the lateral speed was such that it can't can it,

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it just turned it end over end over end. But as it came to rest, it came to rest upside

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down. I was lying on the ground. In the lip of the gondola, I trapped my head between

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the gondola and the ground. Fulgum's head immediately swells. The recovery helicopter

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flies him and Kittenger who has minor injuries to the hospital at Walker Air Force Base.

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The balloon units recovery crew, driving their communications vehicle, a converted ambulance,

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picks up Kaufman in the balloon wreckage and drives over to the base.

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We finally got in and I think one of the MP's drove us down to the hospital and guided

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us to the hospital. Once we got there, we parked by the emergency that was a ramp right

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there. The converted ambulance is parked exactly where Dennis claims to have seen an ambulance

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with bizarre wreckage inside. There are two panels similar to the ends of a canoe. There

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is also writing on them which could be difficult to decipher at a distance. Inside the hospital,

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Fulgum's head has swollen to twice its normal size. This remarkable photo was taken days

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after the swelling had already begun to subside. The first thing the flight surgeon did, of

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course, to try and contain the swelling in my head, was to wrap me in ace bandages. Of

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course, that further enhanced the bulk of the head. By now, my eyes had completely swollen,

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shutting head turned black from the bud. Fulgum, free to roam the hospital, draws stairs

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from startled onlookers. Meanwhile, Kittenger is desperately trying to arrange for a new

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service. They're returning to write Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to avoid any unnecessary

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publicity for this secret project.

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Four alien Roswell writers talk about this redheaded captain, which was Joe Kittenger,

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talking to some of the people there and making even vicious threats toward them and even

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their families if they divulge what had happened. What the real story was that he had asked

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them very politely, please don't say anything about this balloon accident because I have

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forthcoming programs that could be compromised if too many people learned about this accident.

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The near fatal accident doesn't derail project Excelsior. Kittenger, Kaufman and Fulgum continue

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their balloon born exploration of the upper atmosphere. With the dawn of the space age,

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New Mexico will see more exotic Air Force experimentation in the 1960s and 70s. Experiments

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that will continue to fuel stories of UFOs in Roswell. When we return, how experiments

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with space probes triggered reports of UFOs.

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We launched the Viking nose cone with hot rockets on board from Roswell itself.

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Since the alleged crash at Roswell in 1947, residents of New Mexico have described silver

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discs zipping through the air. Between 1966 and 1972, the balloon unit at Holloman Airforce

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Base conducts experiments near Roswell with vehicles which actually arm spacecraft.

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But they aren't extraterrestrial. They're space probes for NASA's Viking Surveyor

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and Voyager program seen here in this newly collected footage.

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We flew a number of disc shaped objects and those were seen in the air sometimes as flying

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sources. We launched the Viking nose cone with hot rockets on board from Roswell itself.

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Several of the museums in Roswell, they made copies of the Viking nose cone and said,

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hey, this is what the spaceship looked like.

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The space probes are flown to 100,000 feet from a balloon and then released for self-propelled

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supersonic free flight back to the desert floor.

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To an imaginative observer, tests of these NASA space probes could easily be confused

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with the visitation from another world.

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The probes stored on base in hangars may have spurred tales of a captured flying saucer.

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And they kept things kind of locked up so people wouldn't get in their poke around.

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But people passing by maybe through a crack on the hangar door would occasionally see

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this thing and what it was interpreted as was a leftover from the 1947 crash.

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These giant tethered balloons used for weather experiments also add to the stories of strange

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objects hovering over the southwest.

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This rig, called a V-balloon, first flew in the 1960s and bears a remarkable resemblance

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to an eyewitness drawing of the UFO that allegedly crashed in Roswell in 1947.

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These are only the highlights of the Air Force's answer to questions about an alien encounter

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at Roswell more than 50 years ago.

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The two official reports try to illuminate the mysteries that have grown up around a

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highly sensitive Cold War balloon project and other experiments conducted in the remote

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New Mexico desert.

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Theory theorists totally reject their arguments.

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It's funny how they just kind of switch from one story to another and say, oh well you

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know don't think about the fact that we're relying the first time, you know, and then

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of course later it was the Crash Dummies story. I really just wish they would learn to say

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no comment, you know, that really I think dignifies the whole scenario more than anything

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else could.

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Disbelievers draw different conclusions to the Roswell myth.

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If I may make a parallel to the JFK assassination, the Roswell incident has all the makings

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of the same sort of conspiratorial thinking in that the case will never be closed in either

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of these things. And the reason is because the mystery is more compelling than the solution.

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But diehard believers refuse to give up the idea that the government covered up an alien

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UFO crash at Roswell. They still hope that one day this so-called cover-up will finally

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be exposed.

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I wish we had a piece of debris, we don't. You know, I wish we had a photograph of the

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crash site before the retrieval. We don't. I wish we had a photograph of the bodies.

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I wish we had the bodies, you know, but we don't have any of these things. What we have

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is as many hundreds of witnesses.

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Some believe the continued spinning of the Roswell myth is nothing more than a way to

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make a buck.

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And then it expands into a media feeding frenzy and that's the bottom line. The bottom line

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is the green bottom line, period.

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It's put Roswell on the map for one thing. We're averaging over 200,000 people a year

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that are coming. 86% of the people come to Roswell to come and see this museum. And that's

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a lot of people, you know.

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But people still remain firmly divided over the truth about the Roswell incident, which

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has nevertheless earned its place in history.

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We looked back in 100 years from now and let's say some social historian decides to

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write a history of the second half of 20th century America and some of the unusual things

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that people believe. I think Roswell will be up in the top 10 of the myths of America

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and the Cold War as a classic example of a mass hysteria and sort of an urban legend

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that gets told of the fears and anxieties that Americans had during the Cold War wrapped

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around all this new and exciting NASA science fiction culture that we lived in at that time.

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See?