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…
including the boiling of balloons before launch (which he personally developed
during World War II) and a stepladder used to launch balloons, could not all
have coincidentally been used by other organizations.45
The details may have been provided to the radar officers by Crary, Project MOGUL
Field Operations Director, who did not depart by C-54 with the rest of the
NYU /Watson Laboratory group on July 8, but who later left by car on Ju]y 9, the
day the staged launch took place. Additionally, three of Crary's staff, Don
Reynolds, Sol Oliva, and Bill Edmonston, resided permanently in Alamogordo.
It was apparent from Crary's diary that he had worked very closely with Major
Pritchard and reported to him on occasion (twelve documented meetings from
December 1946-April1947). One instance, on April 7, 1947, Crary gave Pritchard
a "progress report for MOGUL project to date," indicating that Major Pritchard had
access to MOGUL information.46 Another statement which appeared to confirm a
cover story appeared in the caption below the balloon picture and described a
typewritten tag stapled to the target identifying it as having come from Alamo-
gordo AAF. Moore believed this not to be true because any equipment foulnd was
not to be associated with the USAAF, only with NYU; therefore flights carried·
"return to" tags identifying NYU as the responsible agency.47
CONCLUSION
Many of the claims surrounding the events of July 1947 could be neither proved
nor disproved. Attempts were not made to investigate every allegation, but rather
to start with what was known and work toward the unknown. To complicate the
situation, events described here took place nearly 50 years ago and were highly
classified. This Top Secret project appeared to have utilized the contept of
compartmentalization very well. Interviews with individuals and review of
documents of organizations revealed that the ultimate objective of the work, or
even the name of the project, in many instances was not known. It was unlikely,
therefore, that personnel from Roswell AAF, even though they possessed the
appropriate clearances, would have known about project MOGUL. In fad, when
the NYU I AMC group returned to Alamogordo in September, their first tdp since
the "incident" occurred, one of the first activities of the project scientists, Peoples
and Crary, who were accompanied by Major Pritchard and Captain Dyvad, was
to brief the commanding officer of Alamogordo AAF and the 509th Bomb Group
Operations Officer, Lt Col Joseph Briley, on MOGUL.48
45. Moore intvw, Jun 8, 1994.
46. Crary personal journal, p. 10.
47. Moore intvw, Jun 8, 1994; Research Division, College of Engineering, NYU, Technical Report
No. 93.02, Constant Level Balloons, Sect 2, Operations, Jan 31, 1949, pp. 36-38.
48. Combined Hist, 509th Bomb Grp and Roswell AAF, Sep 1-30, 1947, p. 79; Untr~scribed
journal of Albert P. Crary, p. 64.

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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.