Roswell: Communicating Fact and Fiction in Popular Culture

In recent decades the American people have become more cynical about, and more skeptical of, official government statements, and the elected officials’ honorable intentions. Thanks to Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, former President Clinton's various scandals, the Bush administration's assertions of “weapons of mass destruction” as a justification for pre-emptive war, and general comments from officials regarding the outcome in Iraq the public may have good reason to be suspicious—and even a little paranoid—of the government and the military. Scandals, cover-ups, and even conspiracies, no longer shock the jaded American public. This brings us to what some conspiracy buffs allege, and much of popular culture assumes, to be the greatest conspiracy and cover-up in American history: the Roswell Incident. According to Time Magazine, the Roswell Incident is the only time that the U.S. government has (intentionally) gone on record as saying UFOs really exist (Time, 1997). Author Charles B. Moore notes that UFO was not always synonymous for extraterrestrial. At one time it simply referred to something observed in the sky that was not a known phenomenon or conventional aircraft. But by the time the Roswell Incident hit the papers, UFO was a common “buzz-word” for flying disc (containing alien visitors). Roswell, New Mexico is a small city of about 49,000. It once housed a military air base, is the birthplace of Demi Moore, and also boasts the world's largest Mozzarella plant. A nearby town is somewhat famous for its lizard races. But Roswell has them beaten, hands down. Tourists come from all over the world to visit the UFO Museum, and the site of the famous 1947 “crash-landing.” Any researcher attempting a sober study of the UFO phenomenon faces a daunting task. The difficulty arises not only from the incredible amount of material pertaining to UFOs, but also that it is all incredibly one-sided—especially when it pertains to the Roswell Incident. Most of those who have written about this have done so with a very clear agenda: either to prove that the aliens crash-landed on US soil, or to disprove this, dispelling all notions of extraterrestrial visitors, and pooh-poohing all reports of UFOs as ludicrous and wacko. The vast majority of this material seems to be written either by dyed-in-the-wool true believers who will go to any great length to argue their point and make converts, or by narrow-minded skeptical scientists and others determined to debunk the “UFO myth.” Some of the latter may be guilty of harboring ulterior motives. Everybody seems to agree on one thing: something plummeted to Earth near Roswell, New Mexico in June of 1947. Cattle rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel stumbled onto the strange debris at the Foster Ranch (85 miles northwest of Roswell) on June 14, 1947 (Time, 1997). He later returned with his family, gathered the debris, and took it home. On June 24, 1947—just a few days later and hundreds of miles distant—pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying near Washington State's Cascade Mountains, when he reported seeing nine disk-like objects flying in formation at about 1200 miles per hour (Time, 1997). To this day, skeptics have not come up with a plausible explanation for what he saw. Arnold's report seemed to trigger a rash of “UFO sightings” across the country, and by the Fourth of July newspapers everywhere were printing reports of “flying saucers.” Brazel led an isolated life, and kept a separate residence away from his wife and children, on his ranch with no outside means of communication. Apparently he had not heard about the UFO furor until July 5, when he went into the nearby town of Corona and heard the rumors. The next day he reported to Sheriff George Wilcox, saying he thought he had found a “flying disk.” Wilcox immediately phoned the Roswell Army Air Field, notifying Major Jesse Marcel, the group intelligence officer. Marcel and counterintelligence corps officer Sheridan Cavitt picked up Brazel and headed out to the ranch to retrieve the debris. Colonel William Blanchard soon ordered Walter Haut, the 509th‘s press officer to issue a press release, telling him “we have in our possession a flying saucer. This thing crashed north of Roswell, and we've shipped it all to General Ramey, 8th Air Force at Fort Worth.” The press release read “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group … was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.” The release went on to say the wreckage had been transferred to “higher headquarters,” according to the July 9, 1947 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The story was picked up by the Associated Press, making news in the New York Times, and even the London Times. Several hours later the military issued a new release that the “flying saucer” had turned out to be nothing more than a weather balloon. Most of the major newspapers ran the new slant to the story. A major exception was the Washington Post. As Berlitz and Moore note in their book, The Roswell Incident (1980) the Post referred instead to an imposition of a “news blackout.” In their 1997 book UFO Crash At Roswell (curiously with the same title as a 1991 book by Randall & Schmitt declaring aliens really did land), Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler, and Charles B. Moore discuss the development of a modem myth, and how it compares to other classic myths and legends. Ziegler calls it “a traditional folk motif clothed in modern garb.” They discuss the grain of truth contained in the “myth,” and tell what they think really happened. Co-author Charles B. Moore was the project engineer for the top-secret Project Mogul. This involved launching balloon trains each carrying three radar reflectors. These were kite-like structures made of paper and tinfoil, with frames of lightweight sticks. Moore and the other authors profess to believe that a balloon train launched June 4, 1947, carrying three radar reflectors, probably landed on the Foster Ranch. Ten days after the Roswell incident, Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unusual objects flying at high speeds in Washington State. The authors theorize these were either an American secret project, or a novel Soviet aircraft bent on surveillance, “or some more sinister purpose.” This set off the wave of UFO sightings reported in newspapers across the country, leading to the offer of a $3,000 reward for anyone finding and retrieving a UFO. The authors go on to say Brazel probably heard about the reward in the nearby town of Corona, and thought he might be able to collect. After all $3,000 was a lot of money—in fact it would have provided a modest but livable annual wage—back in 1947. Brazel reported to Sheriff Wilcox, who promptly phoned the military. The book states the reason Major Marcel, Col. Blanchard and the rest could not identify it as a weather balloon was that the project was so classified and so top-secret that they did not even know about it. Moore claims Project Mogul was so classified he didn't even know the name of it until 1992. He “theorizes” that when General Ramey and Colonel Dubose saw the wreckage they were probably just as mystified as Marcel and Blanchard, because they had not been briefed either. He claims the purpose of the project was carrying acoustical equipment into the stratosphere to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. He concedes that the military might have deliberately issued misleading statements and attempted a cover-up of sorts, due to the sensitive nature of the tests and the climate of the cold war era. The authors also blame the media for the agitation, and describe the whole incident as a “funny example of how the flying saucer furor could get the press so excited about a research balloon flight.” They conclude the whole Roswell Incident was nothing more than the wreckage of Project Mogul's balloon flight number four, and say the whole thing would have died fifty years ago if it was not for tabloid television reviving the myth. There is at least some truth to this; if you reference the 1972 book UFOs—A Scientific Debate, editors Carl Sagan and Thornton Page document a number of well-known UFO sightings, but the Roswell Incident is never referenced once. Time Magazine also concludes the Roswell Incident would have disappeared for good once the headline “Flying Disk Explained” appeared. “Tranquility returned to Roswell, and three decades would pass before any more excitement was stirred,” Time relates, until nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman discovered Major Marcel lived near his home in New Brunswick Canada, and still believed the debris he found was extraterrestrial. His research and conclusions led to the book The Roswell Incident, and finally to a 1989 episode of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries, catapulting the sleepy town of Roswell to its current cult status. In UFO Crash at Roswell, Saler, Ziegler, and Moore conclude the whole thing is a case of mistaken identity perpetuated by the media, and tabloid TV. They believe the media continue to play an important role reinforcing the Roswell Incident as a myth. They say a story is shaped by the originator first, and then by the media. Some segments accept and push the originator's image; others do a critical evaluation and present an alternate version. Tabloids reach a few million people, and television reaches tens of millions. Newspapers only reach a few hundred thousand. So when the predominate image projected by the media is the tabloid/TV image people begin to accept the flying saucer crashed from outer space image as reality. In the 80s and 90s New Mexico Congressman Steven Schiff, physicist Bruce Maccabee, and various groups interested in UFOs petitioned the US General Accounting office, the US Air Force, the FBI, and other government agencies to release all documents pertaining to UFOs and the Roswell Incident under the Freedom of Information Act. Saler, Ziegler, and Moore state that in the 1000 pages of documents dredged up and released in 1995, there is no saucer, there are no bodies, and there is no cover-up. They complain that the ongoing UFO investigation has wasted hours and hours of government time, costing the taxpayers thousands and thousands of dollars, producing nothing substantial. Not so, according to Berlitz and Moore in The Roswell Incident. One of the notes contained in the 1000 pages of documents, according to the authors, is a memo from former FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover: “Memorandum for Mr. Ladd … it has been established that the flying discs are not the result of any Army or Navy experiments, the matter is of interest to the FBI.” Added to the bottom of the memo, in Hoover's own handwriting, is: “I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered… . the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.” The May 1, 1983 edition of a Midwestern newspaper, the Springfield (MO.) News-Leader ran a United Press International article, with a Washington byline, and a headline reading “U.S. had real interest in UFOs, data shows.” The article went on to say “Declassified government documents indicate that despite public comments to the contrary, officials took seriously some reports of UFOs and mysterious lights that danced around the Southwest and elsewhere. The recent declassified material also includes the revelation that Air Force investigators reported three ‘so-called’ flying saucers—each of them occupied by three bodies of human shape but 3 feet tall—were recovered in New Mexico in 1950.” It says the documents detail encounters with UFOs from the 1947 discovery of a “flying disc” near Roswell, to the 1980 reports of mysterious objects landing at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. The FBI document about the three crashed “saucers” with humanoid bodies reportedly speculated they might have crashed because of high-powered government radar. While the Springfield paper perhaps did not have the highest standards of journalistic integrity in the country, it attributed this information to the UPI wire service. More “evidence” about the Roswell Incident has surfaced in recent years. In 1991 science fiction author Kevin Randle, and Center for UFO Studies investigator Don Schmitt published UFO Crash at Roswell, introducing new witnesses including former Roswell mortician Glenn Dennis, who claims he received inquiries from the air base about the availability of numerous child-size coffins, and procedures for embalming bodies that had been exposed to the weather for several days. Springfield MO. resident Gerald Anderson also came forth and spoke about what he remembered from when he was five years old living with his family in New Mexico in 1947. In an interview with the Springfield News-Leader, he stated: “We all went up … to it (a large silver disk). There were three creatures, three bodies, lying on the ground underneath this thing in the shade. Two weren't moving, and the third one obviously was having trouble breathing, like when you have broken ribs. There was a fourth one (that)… apparently had been giving first aid to the others.” Then, Anderson claims, the military arrived, warned everybody this was top secret, to forget what they saw, and “unceremoniously” ushered everybody away. The skeptic's choice UFO Crash at Roswell (Saler, Ziegler & Moore; 1997) concedes Anderson agreed to and passed a lie detector test about his viewing the crashed saucer with the alien bodies, but also notes he was only five years old at the time and said in his original statement that at first he thought they were “plastic dolls.” The authors go on to say that looking like “plastic dolls” is a strange way to describe dead aliens, and that what he really saw were the anthropomorphic test dummies that the military was allegedly dropping from weather balloons in the mid 1950s. In Case Closed, the 1997 Air Force report on Roswell, Captain James McAndrew critiques He says when he first saw the he thought it was a and didn't really get very but thought he saw and at first thought they were “plastic dolls.” He also by in his to with one of the other arrived, by military and to the is a military of the alien and Anderson also says he the military with or before them out of the official states the to describe the crashed and to describe the that a balloon with an anthropomorphic was the for this He also that his were all … a in … is probably a reference to a Air Force to the dummies and in the tests to air from the flight His that they had on their bodies were probably to the and to of the and McAndrew He said the were probably the and for the The report the of because of his at the time, and because he states didn't really get very But it on to detail of he saw seemed to be but was just The only of the McAndrew really issue with is the about the military and them out because it was top He claims the military would have never in an and that to go around that something is top secret would have been Case in on the fact that Anderson the as looking like “plastic dolls” from a but the fact that he said one of the in the was to with one of or that in other he has said it that one of them was but still Case the of the Roswell Incident, and the military this would an to all the and officials on TV and that the Roswell Incident was a of Air Force over a of many and to have in 1947. They the were the anthropomorphic test dummies from balloons in the mid 1950s. they to the of the into as a to the They also some of the reports of alien bodies could have from a aircraft in their and a balloon in Air Force were Captain McAndrew claims of the reports to the Roswell Incident come from Project the Army Air research His report states of these were never were and published in one for of access for the general public. This is a to Charles B. statements that the project was so top secret and classified that he did not even know the name of it until 1992. the Roswell Incident a modern or is there more to it an example of or This phenomenon was first by and a of group that seems to have common to all Benson of Roswell as a of and the book UFO Crash at Roswell how the Roswell Incident be it is not then it is it is that is the result of a government conspiracy and it is true seriously we the It that the top would to the of one of their own weather and have to the debris to to have it It somewhat that the people reported seeing in Roswell were really test dummies five or years but then about Roswell is a of a The official information and that the military has out seems as as the the people of Roswell are So the how seriously we all Carl Sagan that there is a that there are about a million other with even he the that are our are and others have reportedly UFOs in and even one on the of a according to the Roswell Incident, but would not release the of who was also an Air Force reportedly went to Air Base to his General to the UFO were according to statements in The Roswell Incident, was you and President was to have to the alien bodies on but this story is and may be The document pertaining to has been exposed as a But apparently did from his press corps and on that Press James was to make a of the United Press reported that the President had been for and the Associated Press even on their wire that President was only to it up he it as “a of journalistic and a off of his But did he really off to alien President he had once a and to release all government documents pertaining to UFOs, only to on his once he took In the U.S. and said before the was out the to make what are as about on information from the would be a of official that in the has UFO The After Roswell, a book written by J. a and former of claims that whole was not really with the but really to us from alien space This but there may be more to than one would press in his the that in on had to to the of an alien from On separate had to from the written that had a of all on to alien President was either in reality than even his or more and than even his In of on a state visit to President was if an alien really landed in Roswell and he as as an alien did not in Roswell New in 1947. … if the United Air Force did alien bodies, they didn't tell about it and to (Time, 1997) So what did the government really up the Roswell it was it to military or were officials really up an alien it even for to be really what after years of and It seems that the government took the UFO at least for a In the Sagan book, James is that a large of UFO seems to point in no other than the extraterrestrial … that is by the because this has been to be little more than a matter of It is if not to get to the truth of the the documents released under the Freedom of Information really that extraterrestrial crash-landed Some people to others simply out any through thousands and thousands of pages of documents it seems to on you and upon you The is out but you really have to for even then for people the would be more a matter of than of

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