What really happened at Roswell. (truth behind the July 1947 UFO crash
 in Roswell, New Mexico)
 Byline:  Kal K. Korff
 07/97
 Skeptical Inquirer
  The Roswell UFO crash "mystery" has now been solved. No extraterrestrial
spacecraft was involved. What did stimulate the original report was, however,
quite interesting, although decidedly earthly.
  According to much widely held public opinion, the United States government
successfully recovered the remains of a crashed UFO/along with its
extraterrestrial occupants near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. In what is
now known as the "the Roswell incident," the U.S. military is said to have
quickly covered up the affair and continues to shroud it in extreme secrecy
even today.
  If these events surrounding Roswell in the summer of 1947 actually took
place, as have been claimed in several books on the subject and by numerous
UFO researchers, it would certainly constitute the story of the millennium
and be the greatest government-sponsored coverup of all time. Indeed, should
irrefutable evidence ever surface that any government on this earth possessed
the physical remains of either an extraterrestrial spacecraft or its
occupants, it is an understatement to say that such a revelation would
fundamentally transform humanity as we know it.
  What does one do with the numerous claims about Roswell that have surfaced
over the years? How does one begin to determine the truth about what really
happened in 1947 and sort the fact from the fiction?
  The Roswell incident, and all that surrounds it, is a complex web of 
vents,
 not easily understandable nor explainable until examined fully and in
painstaking detail. In my new book, The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't
Want You to Know (Prometheus Books 1997), I undertake such a dissection. The
book presents the results of some sixteen years of research and, for all
practical purposes, leaves no stone unturned. The Roswell "mystery" has been
solved, and there is no credible evidence that the remains of an
extraterrestrial spacecraft was involved.
  The Original Roswell Event
  For non-UFO buffs, the Roswell incident effectively began after the Fourth
of July holiday weekend in 1947 when a rancher named William "Mac" Brazel
reported to the local sheriff, George Wilcox, that he might have recovered
the remains of "one of them flying saucers." Wilcox, according to various
accounts, then contacted military authorities at nearby Roswell Army Air
Field, where Major Jesse Marcel was assigned to investigate.
  Marcel and two Counter Intelligence Corps agents, Sheridan Cavitt and Lewis
Rickett, drove out to the ranch where Brazel worked to examine and collect
the wreckage. On July 8, 1947, the public information office at Roswell AAF
made the startling announcement that they had recovered the remains of a
"flying disc."
  However, by the next day the excitement was over. Brigadier General Roger
Ramey, who had ordered the wreckage sent to him for examination at Carswell
Air Force Base (also known as Fort Worth), held a press conference, with
Major Marcel present, and announced that all the hoopla had been over a
mistaken weather balloon, and nothing more.
  With Ramey's deflating announcement, the Roswell "flying saucer" story was
effectively dead and would remain so for decades. Then, in 1978, UFO
researcher Stanton Friedman happened to meet Marcel. Because Marcel dredged
up his recovered-saucer story, and Friedman thought he had at last found a
"star" witness who could blow open the U.S. government's alleged coverup of
crashed saucers and pickled aliens, the Roswell myth began anew, with
Friedman as its most vocal (and visible) champion.
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Origin: --->     True Believers Truly Foolish
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