Documents / FOIA release

roswell

Office of the Secretary of Defense · 993 pages · text from the file's own layer

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published in 1995 by Headquarters United States Air Force. It was written in response to Representative Steven H. Schiff's request and a General Accounting Office audit, and it contains Col. Richard L. Weaver's report and 1st Lt. James McAndrew's synopsis, along with attachments, appendices and photographs. The report says researchers found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concludes that the 1947 debris came from a Project MOGUL balloon train.

  • p. 5 …Additionally, historians Alfred Beck, William Heimdahl, Roger Miller, Eduard Mark, and Jacob Neufeld shared with us…
  • p. 10 …Security markings have been deleted from previously classified documents. The reader is advised that blacked-out…
  • p. 35 …covered the years 1945-1949, that were marked on the index as "destroyed." The researchers noted…
  • p. 39 …I do not recall any other types of material or markings, nor do I remember seeing…
  • p. 41 figures on the sticks, lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings, with…
  • p. 51 …UFO buffs contend the incident marked the beginning of a government conspiracy to sup- press evidence…
  • p. 99 …Although we cannot be absolutely sure that the histories marked "no holding" in the above list…
  • p. 167 …No marks in the ground, dug up, anything hidden, or anything like that, just out on…
  • p. 201 …Some bush pilot had found some pock marks in dty snow in Alaska in 1950. So…
  • p. 219 …When this purplish-pink marking on the debris came up, I immediately remembered this sort of…
  • p. 220 …men, and they were joking about these markings on the tape. I have a letter that…
  • p. 224 …No, because he said it was balsa sticks and smoky rubber and had those curious markings…
  • p. 230 …White Sands to record Hermes." I've marked the key things here with red, and then…
  • p. 309 …in color, appeared to be weather faded markings, with no rhyme or reason. He did not…
  • p. 329 …the wreckage, also remembers the purple/pink marks. Newton stated that when he was called to…
  • p. 558 …On this flight re- cord, marked oscillations are observed at three points. Despite the presence of…
  • p. 563 …KENT, TEXAS Figure 25 On Flight 71 marked oscillations are seen at the fleeting level and…
  • p. 566 …From the height-t~e curve of this flight (Figure 29) the very marked effect of…
  • p. 567 …Pre- sumably the marked easterly flow then observed above 60.000 feet carried this second flight…
  • p. 667 …Figure 46 shows the train; figure 47 shows the time-altitude curve, Which exhibits a marked…
  • p. 910 …minute, the distance between successive re- ference marks will be 30 to 40 centimeters de- -56-
  • p. 915 …is measurable by the distance be- tween the reference marks. If there is a sudden -61-
  • p. 920 …are reached. (c) Check pressure of the marking pens. Too much pressure of the pens on…
  • p. 923 …This may be done by measuring the horizontal distance be- tween the temperature and pressure marks…
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 been 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 until1978, 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. 993 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.