was an elite outfit--the only atomic group in the
world. On the morning of July 8, 1947, Colonel
William Blanchard, Commander of the 509th Bomb
Group, issued a press release stating that the
wreckage of a "crashed disk" (UFO) had been
recovered. The press release was transmitted over the
wire services in time to make headlines in over thirty U.S. afternoon
newspapers that same day.
Within hours, a second press release was issued from the office of General
Roger Ramey, Commander of the Eighth Air Force at
Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas, 400 miles from
the crash site. It rescinded the first press release and,
in effect, claimed that Colonel Blanchard and the
officers of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell had
made an unbelievably foolish mistake and somehow
incorrectly identified a weather balloon and its radar reflector as the
wreckage of a "crashed disk."
One of those two press releases had to be untrue. There is now solid
testimony from numerous credible military and civilian witnesses who
were directly involved, that the "crashed disk" press release issued by
Colonel William Blanchard of the 509th Bomb Group from Roswell was
true and that the subsequent "weather balloon" press release from Eighth
Air Force Headquarters in Fort Worth. Texas, was a hastily contrived
cover story.
Those who knew and worked with William Blanchard say he was a solid,
no-nonsense, businesslike individual, and not someone who would make a
fool of himself and the Air Force by ordering a press release about
something as out of the ordinary and dramatic as the event at Roswell
without being certain he was correct. In other words, if Blanchard issued a
press release saying there was a crashed disk, there was a crashed disk.
Colonel William Blanchard would later go on to become a four-star
general and Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.
The first witness located by investigators who was willing to testify and
allow his name to be used was retired Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Marcel,
the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell. He was a
highly competent individual and one of the first two military officers at the
actual crash site. In a 1979 videotaped interview, Jesse Marcel stated, ". . .
it was no! a weather balloon, nor was it an airplane or a missile." As to the
exotic properties of some of the material, he stated, "It would not burn . . .
that stuff weighs nothing, it's so thin, it isn't any thicker than the tinfoil in
a pack of cigarettes. So, I tried to bend the stuff. It wouldn't bend. We even
tried making a dent in it with a sixteen-pound sledge hammer. And there
was still no dent in it."
It is inconceivable that a man of Jesse Marcel's qualifications and
experience, the intelligence officer of the only atomic-bomb group in the
world, would have mistaken any kind of conventional wreckage, much less
the remains of a weather balloon and its radar reflector, for that of a craft
or vehicle that in his words was "not of this earth. " Even if he had initially
made such a gross misidentification, he would certainly
have been able to see his mistake later after it had been
brought to his attention. When returning to the base,
he stopped by his house with a few pieces of the
unusual wreckage to show his wife and eleven-year-old
son. One piece, a small section of I-beam, had strange
hieroglyphic like symbols on its surface. His son, Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr.,
now a practicing medical doctor and qualified National Guard helicopter
pilot and flight surgeon, remembers the incident well. He has been able to
produce detailed drawings of some of the symbols. During his career, Jesse
Marcel Sr., went on to other important assignments, including the
preparation of a report on the first Soviet nuclear detonation, which went
directly to President Truman.
The late General Thomas DuBose was a colonel and General Ramey's chief
of staff at Eighth Air Force Headquarters in Forth Worth, Texas, in 1947.
Before his death in 1992, General DuBose testified that he himself had
taken the telephone call from General Clements McMullen at Andrews
Army Air Field in Washington, D.C., ordering the coverup. The
instructions were for General Ramey to concoct a "cover story" to "get
the press off our backs."
Retired General Arthur E. Exon was stationed at Wright Field in Dayton,
Ohio, as a lieutenant colonel in July of 1947 during the time the wreckage
from Roswell was brought in. In a 1990 interview, General Exon said of
the testing, "Everything from chemical analysis, stress tests, compression
tests, flexing. It was brought into our material evaluation labs. (Some of it)
could be easily ripped or changed . . . there were other parts of it that
were very thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with heavy
hammers. . . ." Of the men that did the testing, he said, " . . . the overall
consensus was that the pieces were from space."
The testimony of Mr. Glenn Dennis leaves little doubt about the nature of
what was recovered in 1947. Glenn Dennis still lives in the Roswell, New
Mexico, area and is a respected businessman and member of the
community. He is down-to-earth and straightforward. In 1947 Glenn
Dennis was a young mortician working for the Ballard Funeral Home,
which had a contract to provide mortuary and ambulance services for
Roswell Army Air Field.
Prior to learning about the recovery of the unusual wreckage at Roswell,
he received several telephone calls one afternoon from the mortuary
officer at the air field. He was asked about the availability of small,
hermetically sealed caskets and questioned about how to preserve bodies
that had been exposed to the elements for several days. There was concern
about possibly altering the chemical composition of the tissue.
Later that evening, as a result of unrelated events, he made a trip to the
base hospital. Outside the back entrance he
observed two military ambulances with open
rear doors, from which large pieces of wreckage
protruded, including one with a row of unusual
symbols on its surface. Once inside, he
encountered a young nurse whom he knew. At
that same instant, he was noticed by military police, who physically
threatened him and forcibly escorted him from the building.
He met with the nurse the next day, and she explained what had been
going on at the hospital. She was a very religious person and was upset to
the point of being in a state of shock. She described how she had been
called in to assist two doctors who were doing autopsies on several small
nonhuman bodies. She described the terrible smell, how one body was in
good shape and the others mangled, and the differences between their
anatomy and human anatomy. She also drew a diagram on a napkin
showing an outline of their features. That meeting was to be their last--she
was transferred to England a few days later.
The main part of the craft apparently came down some distance from the
"debris field" at the Brazel ranch. Researchers were only recently able to
confirm this second site because few people knew about
it. According to witness testimony, this is also the site
where the bodies were found. Most of the witnesses to
this site have not, in fear of government reprisal,
allowed their names to be used. A prestigious law firm
has recently been retained to provide legal counsel to
any such witnesses who might consider going public with their testimony.
Attorneys from the firm have already met with several Roswell witnesses.
In addition to Glenn Dennis, other witnesses were physically threatened or
intimidated. According to members of Sheriff Wilcox's family, he was told
by the military, in the presence of his wife, that he and his entire family
would be killed if he ever spoke about what he had seen. The rancher who
originally discovered the wreckage, Mac Brazel, was sequestered by the
military for almost a week and sworn to secrecy. He never spoke about the
incident again, even to his family. In the months following the incident, his
son, Bill Brazel, found and collected a few "scraps" of material, which he
kept in a cigar box. The material was eventually confiscated by the
military.
Despite the fact that there has been publicity about the Roswell case since
1980, no witness involved in the recovery has ever come forward to
corroborate the "weather balloon" story or to provide some other
explanation for the wreckage, such as a V2 missile or experimental
aircraft. (Both possibilities have been thoroughly checked out and
eliminated.) If there had been a more mundane explanation for the
unusual debris, it seems certain someone would have come forward with it
by now.
On January 12, 1994, United States Congressman Steven Schiff of
Albuquerque, New Mexico, stated to the press that he had been
stonewalled by the Defense Department when requesting information
regarding the 1947 Roswell event on behalf of constituents and witnesses.
Indicating he was seeking further investigation into the matter,
Congressman Schiff called the Defense Department's lack of response
"astounding" and concluded it was apparently "another government
coverup."