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From: XianneKei@aol.com
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:56:09 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 17:30:37 -0400
Subject: TIME: 'Did Aliens Really Land?'
JUNE 23, 1997 VOL. 149 NO. 25
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOCIETY
DID ALIENS REALLY LAND?
AN EXAMINATION OF EVENTS IN 1947 SHOWS SOMETHING DID HAPPEN. BUT THE
RESULTING STORIES GOT OUT OF HAND AND OUT OF THIS WORLD
BY LEON JAROFF
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A mysterious crash, dead extraterrestrials littering the landscape, a
government cover-up. Today the incident near Roswell, N.M., is an
elaborate tale, growing ever more so with time and mythic imagination.
But when it happened, it was almost imperceptible.
The wreckage was strewn over a 200-yd. swath and consisted largely of
rubber strips, tinfoil, wood sticks, Scotch tape, other tape with a
floral design and what rancher W.W. ("Mac") Brazel described as a rather
tough paper. On the day Brazel chanced upon the strange debris, June 14,
1947, he was making his rounds at the J.B. Foster sheep ranch, 85 miles
northwest of Roswell. As he later recalled, he was in a hurry and didn't
pay much attention to the scattered assortment.
Ten days after Brazel's chance discovery, pilot Kenneth Arnold was
flying near Washington State's Cascade Mountains when he spotted what he
described as nine disklike objects flying in formation at about 1,200
m.p.h. Arnold's report, yet unexplained, immediately gave rise to other
sightings, and by July 4, newspapers were heralding literally hundreds
of reports of "flying saucers" in skies across the nation.
But Brazel had no radio in his ranch shack and was unaware of the
sightings until July 5, when he drove to the nearby town of Corona,
heard about the saucers and may have learned of a rumored reward for
anyone who recovered one. By then, Brazel later told the Roswell Daily
Record, he had already returned to the littered field with his wife and
two children, gathered the debris and taken it home. On July 7, while in
Roswell to sell wool, Brazel dropped by the office of Sheriff George
Wilcox, where, he recalled, he "whispered kinda confidential-like" that
he might have found a flying disk. Sheriff Wilcox immediately phoned
nearby Roswell Army Air Field, home of the 509th Bomb Group, and
notified Major Jesse Marcel, the group intelligence officer.
Barely able to control his excitement, Marcel sped into town with
counterintelligence corps officer Sheridan Cavitt, picked up Brazel and
headed out to the ranch. After collecting the debris--which Brazel later
reported weighed no more than 5 lbs.--they stowed it in the trunk of
Marcel's Buick. On his way back to Roswell, Marcel stopped at his home
to show off the booty. Marcel's son Jesse Jr., now 60 and a doctor in
Helena, Mont., remembers being awakened by his father and shown tinfoil,
plastic, "beams or struts" that seemed metallic, and some strange
markings that he thought resembled "hieroglyphics." The younger Marcel
was only 10 at the time, but, he told TIME last week, he recalls that
his father "was pretty excited, and I kind of think he said 'flying
saucers.'"
That is most likely the description Major Marcel used when he returned
to the airfield. As Walter Haut, who was then the 509th's press officer,
tells it, he was ordered by Colonel William Blanchard, the group
commander, to issue a press release. Haut, now 75 (he and his wife have
license plates that read MR UFO and MRS UFO), remembers Blanchard's
saying, "We have in our possession a flying saucer. This thing crashed
north of Roswell, and we've shipped it all to General Ramey, 8th Air
Force at Fort Worth."
Haut's press release caused a sensation. RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON
RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION, proclaimed the Roswell Daily Record on July 8.
Word of the "capture" quickly spread, and the phone lines in the offices
of Sheriff Wilcox and First Lieut. Haut were jammed for hours with press
inquiries from around the world.
The furor was short-lived. At 8th Air Force headquarters the same night,
Brigadier General Roger Ramey, after consultations with his weather
forecaster, Warrant Officer Irving Newton, called in the local press and
announced that the debris was the remnants not of a saucer but of a
high-altitude weather balloon. The sticks and tinfoil, he explained,
were from a reflector used to track the balloon by radar. The next day,
under the headline GENERAL RAMEY EMPTIES ROSWELL SAUCER, the Daily
Record reported his retraction and explanation. In the same edition, the
paper quoted rancher Brazel, overwhelmed by the uproar and embarrassed:
"If I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard
time getting me to say anything about it." Tranquillity returned to
Roswell, and three decades would pass before any more excitement was
stirred.
Enter Stanton Friedman, a former itinerant nuclear physicist now living
in New Brunswick, Canada, who has long been, in his words, "a clear-cut,
unambiguous UFOlogist." In 1978, while waiting in a Baton Rouge, La.,
television station for an interview, Friedman was told that Jesse
Marcel, long retired from the Air Force and living nearby, had once
handled the wreckage of a UFO. After quizzing Marcel, who still believed
the debris he retrieved was extraterrestrial, Friedman reviewed the old
stories about Roswell, painstakingly sought out and interviewed other
witnesses, and came to a dramatic conclusion: there had been a cover-up
of "cosmic Watergate" proportions. His research and conclusions became
the basis of the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, co-written by Charles
Berlitz (author of The Bermuda Triangle) and UFO investigator William
Moore. Its publication put Roswell back on the map.
Mentioned briefly in the book was a yarn, told secondhand to Friedman by
a couple who attended one of his lectures in 1972. They claimed that a
friend named Grady ("Barney") Barnett, now dead, had told them about
coming upon a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin, N.M., about
150 miles west of the Foster ranch, in 1947. Before being shooed away by
military police, he claimed, he had spotted several little bodies strewn
nearby. Since the story had no apparent connection to Roswell and was
given scant credence by Friedman and the authors, it was generally
ignored. Yet it was the UFO era's first mention of alien casualties.
But not the last. In 1988, responding to the continuing speculation
about Roswell, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Chicago sponsored a
team to seek out the crash site, recover any remaining debris and
interview surviving "witnesses." Three years later the key members of
that team, science-fiction author Kevin Randle and CUFOS investigator
Don Schmitt, published their conclusions in the book UFO Crash at
Roswell. In addition to recovering a UFO at Roswell, they charged, the
government had found and spirited away the remnants of its crew, several
little alien bodies.
Randle and Schmitt bolstered their tale with accounts by Roswell
witnesses, some of whom had earlier been ferreted out and interviewed by
Friedman. The most notable of their sources was Glenn Dennis, who in
1947 was 22 and working as a mortician. Dennis told of receiving
inquiries from the air base that July about the availability of
child-size coffins and procedures for embalming bodies that had been
exposed to the weather for days.
Even more intriguing, he claimed that he had seen strange activity at
the base hospital early in July and had been ordered to leave after
encountering a hysterical Army nurse, who later told him she had aided
doctors performing autopsies on strange-looking, small bodies. The
nurse, he added, had sworn him to secrecy and had been transferred to
England, and flown out of the base shortly after they spoke. Later, he
said, he heard that she had been killed in a plane crash.
Dennis, who still lives near Roswell, claims that until 1990, the only
person he ever told about the strange goings-on was his father. Why? "I
didn't want to get mixed up in this mess."
Friedman, meanwhile, was pursuing a new lead. His preoccupation with
UFOs had landed him a stint as adviser for a 1989 episode of the TV show
Unsolved Mysteries that dealt with Roswell and other purported UFO
crashes, including the one that ostensibly occurred in 1947 on the
Plains of San Agustin. One viewer of that show, Gerald Anderson,
responded quickly to an 800 number flashed on the screen, protesting
that the re-enactment of the event was inaccurate. For one thing, he
told the operator, the shape of the crashed spacecraft was wrong. And
how did he know? Anderson, now a resident of Springfield, Mo., explained
that he moved to New Mexico with his family in 1947, when he was five,
and that on a rock-hunting outing on the Plains of San Agustin, the
group had come across the wrecked craft.
Friedman was ecstatic. This seemed to be solid confirmation of the story
casually mentioned in The Roswell Incident. He arranged to have John
Carpenter, a Springfield therapist, interview Anderson. Carpenter, who
also directed investigations for the local chapter of MUFON, the Mutual
UFO Network, conducted several sessions with Anderson, often using
hypnosis, presumably to help him "recover" buried memories of the event.
Anderson later told the Springfield News-Leader: "We all went up ...to
it [a large silver disk]. There were three creatures, three bodies,
lying on the ground underneath this thing in the shade. Two weren't
moving, and the third one obviously was having trouble breathing, like
when you have broken ribs. There was a fourth one [that]...apparently
had been giving first aid to the others." Soon after, Anderson claimed,
the military arrived, warned everyone to forget what they had seen and
"unceremoniously ushered" the civilians away from the site. And why
hadn't Anderson ever told his story before? As he grew into manhood, he
explains, he "tucked" away the memory. "I learned you just don't go up
to the average person on the street and say, 'Damn, know what I saw?'"
Armed with his new evidence, Friedman and UFO researcher Don Berliner
co-authored their own book, Crash at Corona, in 1992. Their conclusion:
the government recovered not one but two saucers in July 1947, along
with seven dead extraterrestrials and one that was still alive. The
first craft, they claimed, crashed near Corona after some kind of midair
accident that showered debris on the Foster ranch. And the second, they
wrote, was surely the one Anderson saw.
In their 1994 sequel, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Randle
and Schmitt introduced still more people they called witnesses. One was
Roswell resident Frank Kaufman (called Steve MacKenzie in the book
because he initially preferred anonymity). He maintained that he was
part of a military contingent that had searched for a crashed saucer
and, 40 miles south of the Foster sheep ranch, had discovered a craft
shaped like a plane fuselage, its nose buried in a sandy hill. Through a
cracked section, he insisted, he saw several little bodies.
Another tale was told by a Carlsbad, N.M., resident, Jim Ragsdale, who
said he and a woman friend, camping out in an area north of Roswell
during the Fourth of July weekend in 1947, were amorously involved one
night when they saw an object flash overhead and crash not far away.
Seeking out the wreck, he said, they discovered a crashed saucer and,
using a flashlight, spotted several little corpses. They returned in the
morning to get a better look but beat a hasty retreat when they saw a
military convoy approaching.
Roswell researchers agree that something happened out there, but they
are a rancorous bunch, given to ferocious infighting. Collaborators
become enemies, one calls another a "pathological liar," another
attempts to block publication of a rival's book, and they relish
discrediting each other's witnesses. The bete noire of the Roswell
community is a former Aviation Week senior editor named Philip Klass,
who now publishes the Skeptics' UFO Newsletter, a bimonthly that
regularly exposes duplicity and deflates UFO claims. Roswell believers
are hard pressed, for example, to counter Klass's point that while they
argue about whether the crash date was July 2 or July 4, Brazel reported
unequivocally that he discovered the debris on June 14. Klass has
constantly quoted secret documents, recently released under the Freedom
of Information Act, showing that well after the Roswell incident, the
nation's top security officials were still seeking physical
evidence--any evidence--that UFOs are real.
Minutes of an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board meeting convened on
March 17, 1948, for example, quote Colonel Howard McCoy, then chief of
intelligence at what is now the Wright Patterson Air Force Base (where
the bodies and debris were supposedly shipped): "We are running down
every [UFO] report. I can't even tell you how much we would give to have
one of thexample, quote Colonel Howard McCoy, then chief of intelligence
at what is now the Wright Patterson Air Force Base (where the bodies and
debris were supposedly shipped): "We are running down every [UFO]
report. I can't even tell you how much we would give to have one of
these crash in an area
Still, as the Roswell controversy becomes more heated, Washington has
been under increasing pressure to resolve it. At the urging of New
Mexico Representative Steven Schiff, who complained about a government
"cover-up" of Roswell and the "runaround" he was getting from the
Pentagon, the General Accounting Office announced in January 1994 that
it would launch a hunt for any documents related to the "incident." That
announcement was noted in the Washington Post under the headline "GAO
Turns to Alien Turf in Probe: Bodies of space voyagers said to have
disappeared in 1947."
Stung by the publicity, the Air Force reacted defensively. It promptly
began a six-month investigation of its own, and released its report the
following July. The Air Force investigators, under Colonel Richard
Weaver, interviewed the surviving firsthand witnesses to the debris
recovery, searched records and followed leads that brought them to
Charles Moore, a scientist who in 1947 was working on the then
top-secret Project Mogul.
Mogul, Moore explained, involved launching trains of balloons that
carried acoustical equipment designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.
So that the balloons could be tracked by radar, they were equipped with
corner reflectors. Records showed that one such balloon train was
launched on June 4 and was tracked to within 20 miles of the Foster
ranch before it disappeared from the radar scopes in mid-June. Even more
telling, Moore reported, the corner reflectors were put together with
beams made of balsa wood and coated with "Elmer's-type" glue (to
strengthen them). Also, he noted, the New York toy company that
manufactured the reflectors had reinforced the seams with leftover tape
that Moore recalled had "pinkish-purple abstract flower-like
designs"--markings that Major Marcel could have interpreted as
hieroglyphics.
Finally, the Air Force report stated, "there was no indication in
official records from the [1947] period that there was heightened
military operational or security activity which should have been
generated if this was, in fact, the first recovery of materials and/or
persons from another world." The GAO probe, released in 1995, reported
much the same conclusion.
Perhaps even more disturbing to Roswell buffs was "Roswell in
Perspective," an article in the publication of the Fund for UFO
Research. That report was the product of a two-year investigation by
Karl Pflock, who, after a career that included stints in the CIA and the
Pentagon, resigned to become a full-time UFO investigator and writer.
Pflock, who still believes that some UFOs are extraterrestrial,
nonetheless diligently pursued leads and helped uncover the Charles
Moore revelations. Pflock also found gaping holes in the testimony of
such "witnesses" as Frank Kaufman and Jim Ragsdale. Pflock's conclusion:
"It is all but certain that at least the great majority, if not all, of
what was found at the debris field on the Foster ranch" was the wreckage
of a Project Mogul balloon.
Still another recent defector from the ranks of the hopeful is Kent
Jeffrey, a Delta Air Lines pilot and UFO buff best known for his
"Roswell Declaration," a petition urging the Federal Government to
promptly release all documents pertaining to Roswell.
Because his father had known Colonel Blanchard of the 509th Bomb
Command, Jeffrey was able to wangle an invitation to the 1996 reunion of
the 509th. There he met pilots stationed at Roswell in 1947, most of
whom, he found, had "heard nothing about the supposed crashed-saucer
incident until years later, after all the publicity started." After
chasing down other sources suggested by 509th pilots, Jeffrey was
convinced. "In essence," he says, "the 1947 Roswell case has turned out
to be a red herring, diverting time and resources away from research
into the real UFO phenomenon."
Later this month, the Air Force will release the results of its second
study, launched after UFOlogists complained that its 1994 report did not
address the issue of alien bodies. ("It seemed rational to us," explains
the Air Force's Weaver, "that since we proved there were no UFOs, it
automatically meant no aliens.")
For a few years after 1947, the report will explain, the Air Force
conducted experiments that involved dropping dummies from high-altitude
balloons to study the results of the impact. Witnesses' descriptions of
the "aliens," the Air Force notes, closely match the characteristics of
the dummies: 3 1/2 ft. to 4 ft. tall, bluish skin coloration and no
ears, hair, eyebrows or eyelashes.
"What quite likely happened," says Weaver, "is that people who saw these
dummies mistook them for aliens." And, he notes, because no mention of
aliens was made until 1978, those "who were interviewed were trying to
recall events that took place 30 years earlier." Weaver blames
UFOlogists for "linking" these sightings, which occurred after 1947, to
the original Roswell incident.
Despite the Air Force reports, despite Pflock and Jeffrey, Roswell
believers remain unshaken. "If you can't attack the data," Friedman
says, "attack the people by saying they are nuts, kooks, quacks ... The
evidence is overwhelming," he insists, "that planet Earth is being
visited by extraterrestrial life."
The millions of Americans who believe that U.S. officials are
withholding the truth about Roswell specifically and UFOs in general are
not about to be swayed by the facts. Echoing The X-Files, they insist
the truth is still out there. Says Weaver: "What I hadn't realized
[before we issued our first report] was the vehemence of the pro-UFO
people. Telling them there was no saucer at Roswell was like telling a
kid there is no Santa Claus." With the urge to believe so strong, the
legend of Roswell will doubtless go on and on.
--Reported by James Willwerth/Roswell, Elaine Rivera/New York and
Chandrani Ghosh/Washington
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