Documents / FOIA release

rosswe1

Office of the Secretary of Defense · 31 pages · text from the file's own layer

This July 1994 Department of the Air Force package, from SAF/AAZ to the Secretary of the Air Force, covers a report written to support a General Accounting Office audit requested by Congressman Steven Schiff. The Air Force searched its offices, archives and records centers and interviewed witnesses, including Sheridan Cavitt. It found no evidence of an extraterrestrial event, alien bodies or a cover-up. It concludes that the debris recovered near Roswell in 1947 most likely came from a Project MOGUL balloon.

  • p. 3 …Records were located and thoroughly explored concerning a then-Top Secret balloon project, designed to attempt…
  • p. 5 USAF in September, 1947, the USAF inh~ted equipment, personnel, records, policies, and procedures from the…
  • p. 7 …EVOLUTION OF THE EVENT FROM 1947 TO THE PRESENT General Ramey's press· conference and rancher…
  • p. 9 …This included directing searches at current offices where special or unusual projects might be carried out…
  • p. 13 …USAF records showed that between June 24, 1947, and July 28, 1947, there were five crashes…
  • p. 19 …Its name was Project MOGUL (Atch 19). Project MOGUL was a then-sensitive, classified project, whose…
  • p. 20 …These interviews confirmed that Project MOGUL was a compartmented, sensitive effort. The NYU group was responsible…
  • p. 21 …It is very probable that this Top Secret project balloon train (Flight 4), made up of…
  • p. 22 …Trakowski provided specific details on Project MOGUL and described how the security for. the program was…
  • p. 23 In order to provide a more detailed discussion of the specifics of Project MOGUL d how…
  • p. 26 …Copy of Vandenberg's Appointment Book and Diary, July 7-9, 1947 16. July 9, 1947…
  • p. 31 …with that of the components of a Project MOGUL balloon train. MOGUL reports and documents that…
some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the
construction. No string or wire were to be found but there were
some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment
may have b~ used. Brazel said that he had previously found two
weather balloons on the ranch, but_that what he found this time did
not in any way resemble either of these.
EVOLUTION OF THE EVENT FROM 1947 TO THE PRESENT
General Ramey's press· conference and rancher Brazel's statement effectively
ended this as a UFO-related matter until 1978, although some UFO researchers
argue that there were several obtuse references to it in 1950's-era literature.
Roswell, for example, is not referred to in the official USAF investigation of UFOs
reported in Project Bluebook or its predecessors, Project Sign and Project Grudge,
which ran from 1948-1969 (which Congressman Schiff subsequently learned when
he made his original inquiry).
In 1978, an article appeared in a tabloid newspaper, the National Enquirer, which
reported the former intelligence officer, Marcel, claimed that he had recovered
UFO debris near Roswell in 1947. Also in 1978, a UFO researcher, Stanton
Friedman, met with Marcel and began investigating the claims that the material
Marcel handled was from a crashed UFO. Similarly, two authors, William L.
Moore and Charles Berlitz, also engaged in research which led them to publish
a book, The Roswell Incident, in 1980. In this book they reported they interviewed
a number of persons who claimed to have been present at Roswell in 1947 and
professed to be either firsthand or secondhand witnesses to strange events that
supposedly occurred. Since 1978-1980, other UFO researchers, most notably
Donald Schmitt and Kevin Randle, claim to have located and interviewed even
more persons with supposed knowledge of unusual happenings at Roswell. These
included both civilian and former military persons.
Additionally, the Robert Stack-hosted television show ''Unsolved Mysteries"
devoted a large portion of one show to a "re-creation" of the supposed Roswell
events. Numerous other television shows have done likewise, particularly during
the last several years, and a made-for-TV movie on the subject is due to be
released this summer. The overall thrust of these articles, books, and shows is that
the "Roswell Incident" was actually the crash of a craft from another world, the
US Government recovered it, and has been "covering up" this fact from the
American public since 1947, using a combination of disinformation, ridicule, and
threats of bodily harm, to do so. Generally, the USAF bears the brunt of these
accusations.
From the rather benign description of the "event" and the recovery of some
material as described in the original newspaper accounts, the "Roswell Incident"
has since grown to mythical (if not mystical) proportions in the eyes and minds
of some researchers, portions of the media and at least part of the American
public. There are also now several major variations of the "Roswell story." For
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FOIA release, from the osd collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 31 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.