roswell

COL TRAKOWSKI - 6/29/94 10
A: It's about 45 years since all of this happened. Even at the time, as I mentioned a moment
ago, one gets very busy in a project of this sort, and you treat rather large events as they come; you give
them action, and then you go on to the next. All of these events don't stay in memory.
Q: We understand that you've been contacted by various people such as Mr. Pflock and Mr.
Todd, and we do appreciate your spending some time with us in this endeavor. We think it's very valuable
for people who were actually on the scene to provide their accounts of what occurred. It is valuable to
us, and we do appreciate that.
A: I wish I could be of more help on this thing. Apparently, things like this die very hard.
(Laughter)
Q: Did you ever hear of any intelligence people getting involved in this thing? Colonel Duffy
mentioned that some of the people at AMC maybe wanted ...
A: No, I don't. Certainly no intelligence people ... Certainly I was not involved with any
intelligence people in this matter. If I was, I don't recall it. Colonel Duffy and the group at Wright Field
protected me greatly, I know that. They never said it, but I know they did because they left me free to
do the project. And if anything would interfere with getting the project done as quickly as possible, they
would try to steer that away from me. I know they did. Again, they never said it, but their actions were
obvious.
(Pause)
A: .. .1 was assigned for about two months to AFOAT-1. Then Colonel Benjamin Holtzman,
later General Holtzman, pulled me out of AFOAT-1 and sent me to Baltimore because the Air Research
and Development Command had just been organized, and I arrived on the scene while they were still
trying to find chairs and desks. We worked in the old Sun newspaper building in downtown Baltimore.
Q: They had intelligence personnel there, didn't they?
A: They may have. I'm not aware of that. Then after I left the headquarters of ARDC in
Baltimore, I spent four years at the Air Force Research and Development Command Office in Brussels,
Belgium. Following that, I spent more than three years on the Air Staff in the Pentagon.
Q: What year did you retire?
A: On my birthday in 1963. I then went into industry, and I worked for EG&G, a high-
technology company based near Boston, and I became a Vice President of one of their subsidiaries. I
became the project manager and developer of the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard, in
Greenbelt, Maryland. I built that and set it up.
Then when the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, was formed in December of 1970,
I was invited to join the newly formed EPA, and I did. I accepted the position. I went into the EPA as
a Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Research and Development. Then in 1973 and 1974 I
served as Assistant Administrator for Research and Development in the EPA, the position from which I
retired in 1982.