roswell

PROFESSOR MOORE - 6/8/94 28
Q: so is that pretty much maybe a condition of hiring? I
notice you used a lot of former military people. Did you just
tell them at the outset, "This is a classified project for AMC?"
or were they not read on to the project at all?
A: By and large, people thought we were flying balloons
for the Air Force.
Q: As far as they were concerned they were just launching
meteorological balloons?
A: That's correct.
Q: They didn't particularly quiz you about the microphone
you hung in there or .••
A: No.
Q: The balloons that you did launch for Project Mogul and
some of the other test balloons, without the actual instrument
packages, did they have reward tags, "Return to New York
University," or "Return to Roswell Army Air Field," or to
Alamagordo Army Air Field or anything like that?
A: The ones that we wanted to get back, which were the
test constant level balloons and the ones that had microphones on
them, by and large, they did have NYU reward tags on them.
Q: Dr. Peoples, whoever was directing you, was there ever
any concern voiced that this is a top secret object we're sending
into the atmosphere and we're not sure where it's going to come
to earth. Did they ever express any problem with that, that
wherever it came down, it came down?
A: I think the argument was that when it came down, it
would be mixed in with our other gear, and it was just part of a
flight that was to be recovered by NYU. He thought nobody would
interpret what those sorts of instruments would be.
Q: So the tags were kind of generic, like a meteorological
tag, say. "This consists of meteorological instruments ... "
A: "This is a research balloon flown by New York
University ••• "
Q: Were you doing other research? When you went to New
Mexico was there another agenda other than the top secret
project?
A: None whatsoever. Our whole life revolved around the
NYU constant level balloon project. We were developing constant
level balloons, and the service flights for Peoples just sort of
got hidden in that.