roswell

A22 FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1994
GAO Turns to Alien Turf in Probe
Bodies of Space Voyagers Said to Have Disappeared in 19 47
By William Claiborne
Washington Poat Staff Writer
Where television's "Unsolved Mysteries" has
tried and failed, the General Accounting Office
is unafraid to venture.
At the request of Rep. Steven Schiff (R-
N.M.), Congress's investigative branch has
launched a study to determine whether the
government covered up a story alleging that
the bodies of alien space voyagers were re-
moved from a crashed flying saucer found near
Roswell, N.M., in 1947.
After the purported crash of the spacecraft,
the bodies of the extraterrestrial visitors were
said by a local undertaker and other conspiracy
theorists to have been autopsied and secretly
flown to an Air Force base in Ohio.
Even though the "Roswell Incident" has been
repeatedly dismissed by the Defense Depart-
ment as nothing more than UFO fantasizing
triggered by the discovery of a downed weath-
er balloon, the GAO has begun searching for
documents to prove allegations that the Air
Force "suppressed" information sought by
Schiff.
Schiff is a member of the House Government
Operations Committee, which oversees the
GAO.
GAO spokeswoman Laura A. Kopelson said
the office's investigation, first reported in the
Albuquerque Journal yesterday, stemmed from
a meeting in October between Schiff and GAO
Controller General Charles A. Bowsher. Schiff
complaiiled then that the Defense Department
had been "unresponsive" to his inquiries about
the 1947 incident.
Kopelson said "as far as I know only one in-
vestigator had been assigned" to the case, and
that not enough work had been done to report
any results to Schiff. At another point, Kopel-
son said "the people doing it are either on sick
leave or are unavailable."
She said there was no way of estimating how
much the investigation would cost, and that the
GAO does not release such information any-
way.
GAO conducted 1,380 inquiries into govern-
ment operations in 1992. Its budget has risen
from $46.9 million in 1965 to $490 million last
year. The agency has been criticized, especially
by Republicans, as the "lap dog of the request-
ers," producing reports that tend to support
whatever conclusion the requesting member of
Congress suggests.
Kopelson said Schiff had asked the GAO "to
see if there is any evidence that information
regarding UFOs had been suppressed" follow-
dig the Roswell incident.
Schiff, however, said that at a routine Octo-
ber meeting he had merely complained about
the Defense Department's lack of responsive-
ness but a GAO official said, "We're willing to
take a stab at it."
Schiff, in a telephone interv1ew from Albu-
querque, said that last March, after receiving
inquiries from "UFO believers" and some Ros-
well residents who were in the military in
1947, he wrote Defense Secretary Les Aspin
asking for more information about the reported
spacecraft crash and the alleged disappearance
of the aliens' bodies.
The crash o( a mysterous object 75 miles
northwest of Roswell, which the Air Force lat-
er claimed was a weather balloon equipped with
a radar-reflecting device, was the subject of
several books and remains many UFO buffs'
greatest riddle.
A privately owned museum in Roswell con-
tains a number of documents and photographs
purporting to prove existence of the aliens. It
also displays a re-creation of the spacecraft
surrounded by figures portraying the dead ex-
traterrestrials.
UFO buffs contend the incident marked the
beginning of a government conspiracy to sup-
press evidence of alien life.
Much of the speculation stems from claims
by William Haut, a former Air Force public af-
fairs officer, who said that on July 2, 1947, he
was told to prepare a news release reporting
the Air Force had recovered parts of a flying
saucer and then was told to change the story to
report a weather balloon.
Also, a nurse reportedly told a local funeral
home director that she witnessed the autopsies
of the spacemen, whom she described as having
oversized heads and beetle-like features. The
nurse subsequently died in a plane crash.
After the autopsies, conspiracy theorists said
the bodies were flown to Fort Worth and then
to what is now Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base in Ohio.
In 1989, NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" inves-
tigated the controversy, which the program's
host, Robert Stack, concluded remained un-
solved.
Schiff said after calling Aspin last March to
request a Defense Department briefing on the
Roswell incident, he received a call from an Air
Force lieutenant colonel, who brusquely told
him the documents had been turned over to the
National Archives.
However, Schiff said, Archives officials told
him they did not have the records on Roswell,
even though they did have records of "Project
Blue Book," a 1969 Air Force study of reported
An "allen" depleted on NBC's "Unsolved
Mysteries," which concluded case Is unsolved.
UFO sightings. That study, Schiff said, did not
deal with the Roswell case.
"I was getting pretty upset at all the running
around," Schiff said, adding that at his meeting
with GAO officials, "they made an offer to
help."
"Generally, I'm a skeptic on UFOs and alien
beings, but there are indications from the run-
around that I got that whatever it was, it
wasn't a balloon. Apparently, it's another gov-
ernment coverup," Schiff said.
He called the Defense Department's lack of
response "astounding," and said government
accountability was an issue "even larger than
UFOs."
Asked if the GAO might not be extending
itself, Schiff acknowledged that the agency
"usually does fiscal investigations and at pres-
ent I can't find a fiscal impact" in the Roswell
incident.
Had the agency said, " 'This is beyond our
realm of expertise.' " Schiff said, "I wouldn't
insist on it." He added, "If the Defense Depart-
ment had been responsive, it wouldn't have
come to this."