Mick Wall - The Secret Government

Eventually, in 1997, the United States Air Force issued their final word on the subject with the publication of a book by Captain James McAndrew called 'The Roswell Report: Case Closed'. By now the Air Force had changed their story yet again. The discrepancies in the report as outlined by Friedman and Berliner were now explained as follows:

The debris. The debris reported by Brazel and recovered by officers from the 509th “was not the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien crew, but debris from an Army Air Forces balloon-borne research project code named Mogul.” [1]

The bodies. The reports of extraterrestrial bodies being taken to Roswell Army Air Force base for autopsy were in fact nothing more than high altitude crash-test dummies. [2]

The witnesses. The witnesses were all, apparently, mistaken, lying or attention-seeking. [3]

While McAndrew's 230-page report is ostensibly impressive, much like the Warren Commission report into the Kennedy assassination, on closer examination it fails to hold water.

While Project Mogul may, at the time, have been a classified operation the use of weather balloons was not. Brazel was no newcomer to the New Mexico outback and would undoubtedly have come across weather balloons that had fallen from the sky often enough. He would not have reported this to the sheriff, still less taken a 140-mile round trip to do so. But even if Brazel had been so deceived, is it really credible that a career military officer like Major Marcel or a Counter-Intelligence officer like Cavitt could have been taken in by a crashed weather balloon? While the project to detect Soviet nuclear testing - which did not begin for another two years - might have been classified, the material they were using for this operation was not. According to McAndrew, the USAAF had been using polyethylene high-altitude balloons rather than standard rubber ones for research purposes. This caused some 'misunderstandings'. [4]

Further misunderstandings were brought about by unsuspecting observers spotting these balloons from the ground. McAndrew states: “During this period, polyethylene balloons launched from Holloman AFB [New Mexico] generated flying saucer reports on nearly every flight.” Further: “The large balloons generated UFO reports based on their radar tracks. This was due to their large metallic payloads that weighed up to several tons and echoed radar returns not usually associated with balloons.” [5]

As conclusive proof that what was recovered on the Foster ranch was nothing more than a radar-reflecting weather balloon, McAndrew offers the now famous photograph of Major Marcel displaying wreckage in the office of General Roger Ramey at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He writes: Maj. Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer from Roswell Army Air Field, with the debris found 75 miles northwest of Roswell in June 1947. When compared to the standard radar target used by project MOGUL, it is clear they are the same object. [6]

This is grossly misleading. No one has ever argued that what Marcel was photographed with at that point was the debris from a weather balloon. However, this is not what he and Cavitt recovered from the ranch. That debris was not presented to the waiting press. That debris, as we shall see, was kept hidden from the public and remains so to this day. Further, it bears no relation to that described by Marcel and his son, Dr. Jesse Marcel, who handled the material. This was light, flexible but extremely strong, almost indestructible. Nothing on Earth, even 50 years on, matches this account.

As far as the actual eye witnesses to the events at Roswell AAF base and the reports of alien bodies, McAndrew casts doubt on the evidence of Glenn Dennis, who worked as an assistant at the mortuary home used by the base and was therefore known well by the workers at the base hospital, where the alien bodies were taken once they had been recovered from the crash site. Dennis had taken an injured airman there that night.

He knew one of the nurses who, on that night, was in a distressed state. He describes the scene as follows: What happened, she told me the next day, they were all sick because those little bodies were in those sacks, and two of them were very mangled and the smell was horrible and one was whole and two were very badly mangled. [7]

Dennis recalled being ordered from the building and his life threatened if he should talk about it [8]. Shortly after, the nurse was transferred to Europe and Dennis lost touch with her, his correspondence being returned with the information “[addressee] deceased” [9].

The only problem with this account is Dennis's refusal to name the nurse. She swore him to secrecy and he has refused to break that commitment, despite her apparent demise.

McAndrew identifies her as 1st Lieutenant Eileen M. Fanton, who was indeed transferred to Europe soon after the event but retired from active duty due to a medical condition in 1955 [10].

The author also queries Dennis's recollection of a Captain 'Slatts' Wilson, the head nurse. He cites two possible identities for this woman, neither of whom were stationed at Roswell AAF base at the time [11]. He also questions Dennis's assertion that there was a white officer and a black NCO working together since the armed forces at this stage were segregated [12].

On the other hand, Dennis does not suggest they were working in the same unit, merely that one, the sergeant, obeyed the orders of the other, the officer.

McAndrew's explanation for the 'bodies' is simple: they were the newly utilised anthropomorphic crash-test dummies used to test falls from high altitudes. Nonetheless, as the author himself notes, these particular dummies were not manufactured until 1949, by the Sierra Engineering Company of Sierra Madre, California, and were not delivered until the following year [13]. Therefore, in 1947, the time at which McAndrew alleges they were mistaken for alien bodies, these anthropomorphic dummies were not available.

But even if they had been, or even supposing they were early prototype models in use at the time, how a “skeleton of aluminum or steel, latex or plastic skin, a cast aluminum skull, and an instrument cavity in the torso and head for the mounting of strain gauges, accelerometers, transducers and rate gyros” which stood at “72 inches tall, weighed 200 pounds . . . and could withstand up to 100 times the force of gravity” [13], could be mistaken for an alien body remains unexplained. Similarly, where did the smell that so sickened the nurse and others present come from? And if these were crash test dummies, why were they taken to the hospital?

Despite these anomalies in McAndrew's explanation of these events, he concludes that: “Dummies of these types were most likely the 'aliens' associated with the 'Roswell Incident'.”[13] He bases this purely on the fact that some descriptions of the recovered bodies bear some resemblance to that of these dummies [14], and reproduces photographs of the same to illustrate his point [15].

In his summary of the incident, McAndrew dismisses any claims that one or two extraterrestrial craft crashed near Roswell AAF base. He writes:. . . It is reasonable to conclude, with a high degree of certainty, that the two “crashes” were actually descriptions of a launch or recovery of a high altitude balloon and anthropomorphic dummies . . . The extensive detailed descriptions provided by the witnesses, too numerous to be coincidental, were of the equipment, vehicles, procedures, and personnel of the Air Force research organizations who conducted the scientific experiments HIGH DIVE and EXCELSIOR [both USAF high altitude tests]. [16]

For McAndrew this explanation may suffice but it has singularly failed to quieten the calls for the Air Force and other Government agencies to reveal what they know about the reality of the Roswell Incident. Experienced officers do not mistake crashed weather balloon debris for extraterrestrial craft. Military personnel are not required to scour fields in order to recover said weather balloon debris for flight to Wright-Patterson Air Base in Ohio under armed guard. Nor are Air Force Generals in the habit of issuing press releases acknowledging recovery of a crashed UFO when what they are in fact sitting on is a downed radar-reflector.

McAndrew fails to address any of this because either he has no answers or he has not been asking the right questions.

The press release issued by Lt. Haut made the front page of the Roswell Daily Record the following day, Tuesday July 8, 1947. Aside from the admission that Marcel had recovered a 'flying saucer' the article says nothing particularly of note. However, a more revealing text appears at the bottom of the page. Under the headline 'Air Force General Says Army Not Doing Experiments', General Nathan F. Twining, the head of Air Materiel Command, is quoted as saying: “Neither the AAF nor any other component of the armed forces had any plane, guided missile or other aerial device under development which could possibly be mistaken for a saucer or formation of flying discs .

. . Some of these witnesses evidently saw something but we don't know what we are investigating.” [17]

Twining is a key figure and would certainly be aware of any development, however classified, that might be misidentified as a flying saucer but here he admits not only his ignorance but concedes that something must have been spotted. How different from McAndrew's bluster about weather balloons.

The upshot of the Roswell crashes would be far-reaching and deeply significant, both in terms of National Security and technological advancement in the United States.

The event would also have repercussions for the rest of the world. Next we will look at some of these as the Government struggled to come to terms with the magnitude of the incident.