The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

Similarly, it has also been alleged that General Hoyt Vandenberg, Deputy Chief of Staff at the time, had been involved in directing activity regarding events at Roswell. Activity reports […] located in General Vandenberg’s personal papers stored in the Library of Congress did indicate that on July 7 he was busy with a «flying disk» incident; however, this particular incident involved Ellington Field, Texas, and the Spokane (Washington) Depot. After much discussion and information-gathering on this incident, it was learned to be a hoax. There is no similar mention of his personal interest or involvement in Roswell events except in the newspapers.

The above are but two small examples that indicate that, if some event happened that was one of the «watershed happenings» in human history, the US military certainly reacted in an unconcerned and cavalier manner. In an actual case, the military would have had to order thousands of soldiers and airmen, not only at Roswell but throughout the US, to act nonchalantly, pretend to conduct and report business as usual, and generate absolutely no paperwork of a suspicious nature, while simultaneously anticipating that 20 years or more into the future people would have available a comprehensive Freedom of Information Act that would give them great leeway to review and explore government documents. The records indicate that none of this happened (or if it did, it was controlled by a security system so efficient and tight that no one, US or otherwise, has been able to duplicate it since. If such a system had been in effect at the time, it would have also been used to protect our atomic secrets from the Soviets, which history has showed obviously was not the case). The records reviewed confirmed that no such sophisticated and efficient security system existed.

WHAT THE «ROSWELL INCIDENT» WAS

As previously discussed, what was originally reported to have been recovered was a balloon of some sort, usually described as a «weather balloon,» although the majority of the wreckage that was ultimately displayed by General Ramey and Major Marcel in the famous photos […] in Ft Worth, was that of a radar target normally suspended from balloons. This radar target, discussed in more detail later, was certainly consistent with the description of a 9 July newspaper article which discussed «tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks». Additionally, the description of the «flying disk» was consistent with a document routinely used by most pro-UFO writers to indicate a conspiracy in progress — the telegram from the Dallas FBI office of 8 July 1947. This document quoted in part states: «… The disk is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by a cable, which balloon was approximately twenty feet [6m] in diameter … the object found resembles a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector … disk and balloon being transported …»

Similarly, while conducting the popular-literature review, one of the documents reviewed was a paper entitled «The Roswell Events» edited by Fred Whiting, and sponsored by the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR). Although it was not the original intention to comment on what commercial authors interpreted or claimed that other persons supposedly said, this particular document was different because it contained actual copies of apparently authentic sworn affidavits received from a number of persons who claimed to have some knowledge of the Roswell event. Although many of the persons who provided these affidavits to the FUFOR researchers also expressed opinions that they thought there was something extraterrestrial about this incident, a number of them actually described materials that sounded suspiciously like wreckage from balloons. These included the following:

Jesse A. Marcel, NM (son of the late Major Jesse Marcel; 11 years old at the time of the incident). Affidavit dated 6 May 1991. «… There were three categories of debris: a thick, foil-like metallic-gray substance; a brittle, brownish-black plastic-like material, like Bakelite; and there were fragments of what appeared to be I-beams. On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. This writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved, geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to Russian, Japanese or any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics, but it had no animal-like characters …»