Witness accounts of the Roswell UFO incident

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Follows are excerpts of witness accounts of the Roswell UFO incident.

In 1978, author Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel, the only person known to have accompanied the Roswell incident debris from where it was recovered to Fort Worth, Texas. Over the next few years, the accounts he and others would give elevated Roswell from a forgotten incident to perhaps the most famous UFO case of all time. Marcel and many other witnesses to the recovered debris roughly corroborated each other's accounts, though small details often differed. While many of the descriptions seemed to be describing a similar set of objects, some descriptions seemed to suggest very exotic materials were recovered. Other witnesses described seeing aliens and alien recoveries.

For the purposes of clarity, the first section features witness accounts of the incident as it was initially portrayed in 1947, with accounts of debris, its shipment, and the debris field. The next section are accounts which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s which describe alien recoveries, large military cordons and elaborate security and shipping measures, cover-ups and witness intimidation.

Contents 1 Witness accounts of the debris described in 1947 1.1 Jesse Marcel’s testimony 1.2 The Brazel and Marcel family testimony 1.3 Sheridan Cavitt’s testimony 1.4 Roswell and Fort Worth base witnesses 1.5 Material with exotic properties 1.6 Debris field descriptions 2 Witness accounts of aliens, intimidation and cover-ups 2.1 Accounts of aliens and alien spacecraft recoveries 2.2 Accounts of intimidation 2.3 Accounts of cover-ups 3 References 3.1 Primary References 3.2 Reference citations

[edit] Witness accounts of the debris described in 1947

[edit] Jesse Marcel’s testimony

Though initially vague about details of the Roswell incident — he couldn't recall the year it happened — Marcel soon recounted details suggesting the debris was exotic. He believed the true nature of the debris was being suppressed by the military. His accounts were featured in the 1979 documentary UFOs are Real, and in a 1980 National Enquirer article, which are largely responsible for making the Roswell incident famous by sparking renewed interest.

"There was all kinds of stuff — small beams about three eighths or a half inch square with some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher. These looked something like balsa wood, and were about the same weight, except that they were not wood at all. They were very hard, although flexible, and would not burn…. One thing that impressed me about the debris was the fact that a lot of it looked like parchment. It had little numbers with symbols that we had to call hieroglyphics because I could not understand them. They could not be read, they were just like symbols, something that meant something, and they were not all the same, but the same general pattern, I would say. They were pink and purple. They looked like they were painted on. These little numbers could not be broken, could not be burned. I even took my cigarette lighter and tried to burn the material we found that resembled parchment and balsa, but it would not burn - wouldn't even smoke. But something that is even more astonishing is that the pieces of metal that we brought back were so thin, just like tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes. I didn't pay too much attention to that at first, until one of the boys came to me and said: 'You know that metal that was in there? I tried to bend the stuff and it won't bend. I even tried it with a sledgehammer. You can't make a dent on it,'" Marcel said. ^[1]

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[edit] The Brazel and Marcel family testimony

Bessie Brazel, Mac's daughter, had helped recover the debris. "There was what appeared to be pieces of heavily waxed paper and a sort of aluminum-like foil. Some of these pieces had something like numbers and lettering on them, but there were no words that we were able to make out. Some of the metal-foil like pieces had a sort of tape stuck to them, and when these were held to the light they showed what looked like pastel flowers or designs. Even though the stuff looked like tape it could not be peeled off or removed at all. It was very light in weight but there sure was a lot of it." ^[2]

She also signed an affidavit that had additional descriptions: "The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst. The pieces were small, the largest I remember measuring was about the same as the diameter of a basketball. Most of it was a kind of double-sided material, foil-like on one side and rubber-like on the other. Both sides were grayish silver in color, the foil more silvery than the rubber. Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape. The foil-rubber material could not be torn like ordinary aluminum foil can be torn." ^[3]

Son Bill Brazel Jr. confirmed some of what Bessie said: "There was some tinfoil and some wood and on some of the wood it had Japanese or Chinese figures" ^[4] "There was some wooden-like particles I picked up. These were like balsa wood in weight, but a bit darker in color and much harder. This stuff ... weighed nothing, yet you couldn't scratch it with your fingernail like ordinary balsa, and you couldn't break it either." [2]

Marcel’s son Jesse Jr. also saw the debris. Marcel went home and showed the debris to his family. Marcel Jr.: "[It was] foil-like stuff, very thin, metallic-like but not metal, and very tough. There was also some structural-like material too — beams and so on. Also a quantity of black plastic material which looked organic in nature ... Imprinted along the edge of some of the beam remnants there were hieroglyphic-type characters. I recently questioned my father about this, and he recalled seeing these characters also and even described them as being a pink or purplish-pink color. Egyptian hieroglyphics would be a close visual description of the characters seen, except I don't think there were any animal figures present as there are in true Egyptian hieroglyphics..." ^[5]

He would say elsewhere in a signed affidavit: "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." ^[6]

[edit] Sheridan Cavitt’s testimony

Sheridan Cavitt of the Roswell Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) was identified by Marcel as assisting him in investigating the crash and recovering debris, likely the "man in plainclothes" mentioned by rancher Brazel in a contemporary article as accompanying Marcel and himself. (CIC agents usually wore civilian clothes.) [3]

He was interviewed in 1994 when the Air Force investigated the allegations of a cover-up. In the interview, he said he had no memory of ever meeting Brazel or going out with Marcel, but said he went to the crash site with his CIC assistant Lewis Rickett.

Cavitt said the crash site was tiny, about the size of his living room or "20 feet square." "It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil, something of that type and we gathered up some of it. I don't know whether we even tried to get all of it. It wasn’t scattered; well, what I call, you know, extensively." ^[7]

[edit] Roswell and Fort Worth base witnesses

Some Roswell base personnel have stated having knowledge of or directly participating in events.

• Sgt. Robert Porter: B-29 flight engineer. Porter helped load and was on the B-29 flight from Roswell to Fort Worth, where Marcel was supposed to show some recovered material to Gen. Roger Ramey before proceeding on to Wright Field, Ohio. "I was involved in loading the B-29 with the material, which was wrapped in packages with wrapping paper. One of the pieces was triangle shaped, about 2 1/2 feet across the bottom. The rest were in small packages about the size of a shoebox. The brown paper was held with tape ... The material was extremely lightweight. When I picked it up, it was just like picking up an empty package. We loaded the triangle shaped package and three shoe box-sized packages into the plane. All of the packages could have fit into the trunk of a car." ^[8]

• 1st Lt. Robert Shirkey: The base assistant operations officer. Shirkey also witnessed debris being loaded onto the B-29. "...Standing only three feet from the passing procession, we saw boxes full of aluminum-looking metal pieces being carried to the B-29. Major Marcel came along carrying an open box full of what seemed to be scrap metal. It obviously was not aluminum: it did not shine nor reflect like the aluminum on American military airplanes. And sticking up in one corner of the box being carried by Major Marcel was a small 'I-beam' with hieroglyphic-like markings on the inner flange, in some kind of weird color, not black, not purple, but a close approximation of the two. …A man in civilian dress… was carrying a piece of metal under his left arm... This piece was about the size of a poster drawing board -- very smooth, almost glass-like, with torn edges." ^[9]

• Sgt. Robert Smith: Roswell 1st Air Transport Unit. “My involvement in the Roswell incident was to help load crates of debris on to the aircraft… We were taken to the hangar to load crates. There was a lot of farm dirt on the hangar floor… We loaded crates on to three or four C-54s… One crate took up the entire plane; it wasn't that heavy, but it was a large volume.… All I saw was a little piece of material. The piece of debris I saw was two-to-three inches square. It was jagged. When you crumpled it up, it then laid back out; and when it did, it kind of crackled, making a sound like cellophane, and it crackled when it was let out. There were no creases…. The largest piece was roughly 20 feet long; four-to-five feet high, four-to-five feet wide. The rest were two-to-three feet long, two feet square or smaller. The sergeant who had the piece of material said that was the material in the crates….^[10]

Two witnesses were brought into Ramey's office and told the debris they saw came from Roswell.

• J. Bond Johnson: Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter/photographer, took six photographs of the debris in Ramey’s office, posed with Ramey, Dubose, and Marcel. He said: "It wasn’t an impressive sight, just some aluminum-like foil, balsa wood sticks, and some burnt rubber that was stinking up the office." Johnson said Ramey told him, "We've found out... it's a weather balloon." ^[11] The story in the Star-Telegram stated, “As soon as the ‘disk’ was brought into General Ramey's office, he and Colonel Dubose tabbed it as a weather device. The weather officer on duty at the time, Warrant Officer Newton, merely made identification positive.” ^[12]

• Warrant Officer Irving Newton,weather forecaster at Fort Worth. He was identified in contemporary accounts as being brought in to make an official weather balloon identification for Gen. Ramey. In original testimony, Newton indicated that when he got to Ramey's office, "he was briefed by a colonel... that an object had been found by a major in Roswell and that the general had decided that it was really a weather balloon and wanted him to identify as such." Newton said, "There's no doubt that what I was given were parts of a balloon. I was later told that the major from Roswell had identified the stuff as a flying saucer but that the general had been suspicious of this identification from the beginning..." ^[13] In a later affidavit for the Air Force, he said, "I was convinced at the time that this was a balloon with a [kite] and remain convinced ... There were figures on the sticks lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings with no rhyme or reason." ^[14] Newton's photo was also taken with the balloon debris by an unknown photographer. ^[15]

[edit] Material with exotic properties

There were numerous others who claimed to have seen the debris, [4] and many of them described various types of material having exotic physical qualities. One was a tinfoil-like material which when crumpled up would regain its original shape.

• Brazel Jr.: "The odd thing about this foil was that you could wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed its original shape. It was quite pliable, yet you couldn't crease or bend it like ordinary metal. It was almost more like a plastic of some sort except that it was definitely metallic in nature."
• Marcel Sr.: "[There were] many bits of metallic foil, that looked like, but was not, aluminum, for no matter how often one crumpled it, it regained its original shape again. Besides that, they were indestructible, even with a sledgehammer."
• Sgt. Robert Smith, Roswell 1st Air Transport Unit: "When you crumpled it up, it then laid back out; and when it did, it kind of crackled, making a sound like cellophane, and it crackled when it was let out. There were no creases."

Others had similar accounts. [5]

Another unusual aspect to some of the material was its strength.

• Marcel Sr.: "This particular piece of metal was, I would say, about two feet long and perhaps a foot wide. See, 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 16-pound sledge hammer, and there was still no dent in it."
• Sgt. Lewis Rickett: "There was a slightly curved piece of metal, real light. It was about six inches by twelve or fourteen inches. Very light. I crouched down and tried to snap it... It didn't feel like plastic and I never saw a piece of metal this thin that you couldn't break."

Other witnesses gave similar accounts. [6]

Some also described pencil-like sticks with unusual qualities:

• Marcel Sr.: "[There were] small beams about three-eighths or a half inch square with some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher. These looked something like balsa wood, and were of about the same weight, except that they were not wood at all. They were very hard, although flexible, and would not burn." More detailed quote above.
• Brazel Jr.: Similar quote as Marcel's, also given above. Also, "I couldn't break it and I couldn't whittle it with my pocketknife."
• Loretta Proctor: "The piece he [Mac Brazel] brought looked like a kind of tan, light brown plastic. It was very lightweight, like balsa wood. It wasn't a large piece, maybe about four inches long, maybe just a little larger than a pencil. We cut on it with a knife and would hold a match on it, and it wouldn't burn. We knew it wasn't wood. It was smooth like plastic."
• Jesse Marcel Jr.: "...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." Another quote above.
• Lt. Robert Shirkey: "Standing only three feet from the passing procession, we saw boxes full of aluminum-looking metal pieces being carried to the B-29. ...sticking up in one corner of the box carried by Major Marcel was a small 'I-beam' with hieroglyphic-like markings on the inner flange, in some kind of weird color, not black, not purple, but a close approximation of the two." "I could see the hieroglyphs clearly, the signs were in relief and stood out."

Additional witnesses gave similar accounts. [7]

[edit] Debris field descriptions

Reports of the size of the debris field and of the ranch's ground conditions differ. There is a large range of descriptions of the size of the debris field, from Cavitt claiming the field was about the size of the 20-foot room he was sitting in^[16] to one account Brazel gave in 1947 of "about 200 yards diameter,"^[17] to Marcel Sr.'s description: "The wreckage was scattered over an area of about three quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide," ^[18] or "It was maybe a mile long and several hundred feet wide of debris." ^[19] to yet another description from 1947 attributed to Marcel saying "he found the broken remains of the weather device scattered over a square mile of land."

Bill Brazel Jr. gave an independent description very similar to Marcel's, based on what he said his father later told him, of the debris field being "about a quarter mile long or so, and several hundred feet wide."

An indirect description of debris field size came from combined statements of Bill Brazel and neighboring rancher Bud Payne. The distance between the northernmost portion of the debris field pointed out by Brazel (where he said there was a gouge) and the southernmost portion pointed out by Payne (where he said he was turned away by soldiers) was about three quarters of a mile.

Similarly, Tommy Tyree, a ranch hand later hired by Brazel, stated Brazel told him he had to drive his sheep a mile out of the way to get them to water because they refused to cross the debris field.

Brazel's daughter, Bessie Brazel Schreiber said, "There was a lot of debris scattered sparsely over an area that seems to me now to have been about the size of a football field. There may have been additional material spread out more widely by the wind, which was blowing quite strongly." Like Tyree, she mentioned her father mentioning a lot of debris being near a water tank and his concern that the sheep wouldn't water there. ^[20]

Descriptions of the condition of the field ranged from no disturbance at all to descriptions of deep gouges in the terrain. Marcel Sr. said, "It was nothing that hit the ground or exploded [on] the ground. It's something that must have exploded above ground." Bessie Brazel said she didn't "remember seeing gouges in the ground or any other signs that anything may have hit the ground hard." ^[21]

However, Brazel Jr. said he saw a shallow groove, about 10 feet wide, 500 feet long, and only a foot to 18 inches deep, extending down to the hard shale layer underneath. "This thing made quite a track down through there. It took a year or two for it to grass back over and heal up." ^[22]

Other witnesses to describe a gouge or gouges on the ground were Walt Whitmore Jr. (175 to 200 yards of uprooted pastureland in a fan shape), Roswell counterintelligence officer Lewis Rickett, photographer Robin Adair of the Associated Press, who said he tried to overfly the recovery operation but was waved off by soldiers brandishing weapons, and Gen. Arthur Exon, who said he overflew the area some months later. Exon said that in addition to various gouges, he saw auto tracks leading into the "pivotal areas." ^[23]

[edit] Witness accounts of aliens, intimidation and cover-ups

[edit] Accounts of aliens and alien spacecraft recoveries

• Barney Barnett story. Accounts of an alien recovery at Roswell first publicly emerged in "The Roswell Incident," by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, published in 1980. An incident recounted by soil engineer Barney Barnett to various people was mentioned, where Barnett said that he and a team of archaeologists stumbled across a flying saucer crash with dead aliens on the Plains of San Augustin, near Socorro, New Mexico in July 1947. The military arrived almost simultaneously and led them away.^[24]

• Dr. Charles Bertrand Schultz, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Nebraska. Schultz told a similar crash story, but closer to Roswell. Schultz said he had been in Roswell at the time, and while driving out north of town along Highway 285, had seen a military cordon blocking access west of the highway. Later he met with archeologist Dr. William Curry Holden of Texas Tech, who told him he and his archeological team had been at a crash site north of Roswell and west of the highway and had come across a strange craft with alien bodies. They contacted the military, which took them away when they arrived. Schultz’s two daughters confirmed hearing the story of the crashed flying saucer from their father when growing up. A colleague who worked with Holden, Dr. W. D. Frankforter also corroborated the story, saying he too heard it long ago and was aware of Holden’s involvement. Kevin Randle managed to interview Holden shortly before his death. Randle said Holden several times confirmed the event happening and being there but because of his age had trouble remembering details. Holden’s wife and daughter, Dr. Jane Kelley, said he never told them the story, but confirmed knowing Schultz, who visited them several times. A document also places Holden & Schultz together at an archaeological conference in Albuquerque in December 1947. ^[25]

• Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon, a former commanding officer at Wright-Patterson AFB, has been identified as the highest-ranking military figure to suggest that an alien spacecraft and bodies could have been recovered at Roswell in 1947. He cautioned that though his information was second-hand, it came from men directly involved whom he knew personally and trusted. Exon said he was told about anomalous debris analysis at Wright-Patterson. "A couple of guys thought it might be Russian, but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from space. ...Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space." He said he was also told about bodies being recovered from a nearby related crash site. He flew over the area a few months later and saw at least two impact regions. He said the whole matter was covered up at the highest levels of government. ^[26]

• Several people said that Captain Oliver "Pappy" Henderson, a pilot at Roswell in 1947, had said he flew alien wreckage and had seen alien corpses. His wife, Sappho, said in an affidavit: "He pointed out [a 1980/81 newspaper article on Roswell] to me and said, 'I want you to read this article, because it's a true story. I'm the pilot who flew the wreckage of the UFO to Dayton, Ohio. I guess now that they're putting it in the paper, I can tell you about this. I wanted to tell you for years.' Pappy Henderson never discussed his work because of his security clearance. He described the beings as small with large heads for their size. He said the material from their suits were made of was different than anything he had ever seen. He said they looked strange. I believe he mentioned that the bodies had been packed in dry ice to preserve them." [8] Others gave similar accounts as to what Henderson said.

• Lt. Robert Shirkey, assistant operations officer, (see above) said there were other flights, another to Fort Worth, and a B-29 flight directly to Wright Field piloted by Henderson. He also said that he later learned that: “a Sergeant and some airmen went to the crash site and swept up everything, including bodies. The bodies were laid out in Hangar 84. Henderson's flight contained all that material. All of those involved--the Sergeant of the Guards, all of the crewmen, and myself--were shipped out to different bases within two weeks.” ^[27] Another witness to confirm Henderson piloting a flight of debris was Sgt. Robert Smith, who said he helped load several C-54s with strange metallic crash debris under heavy guard, with Henderson piloting one of the C-54s. Smith said he was “convinced that what we loaded was a UFO that got into mechanical problems.” ^[28]

• CIC agent Lewis Rickett said he accompanied Sheridan Cavitt to the ranch, witnessed high security and a large military debris recovery, handled strange metal debris, and saw a gouge in the ground. In September 1947, Rickett said he and Cavitt assisted astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz try to determine the speed and trajectory of the device that crashed on the Brazel ranch. “According to Rickett, La Paz formed the opinion that [the object] was a probe from another planet.” Rickett said they found a touchdown point five miles from the debris field where the sand had crystallized, possibly from the heat. ^[29] Shortly before he died, it is also claimed he confirmed that the object’s shape was long, thin with a 'bat-like' wing."^[30]

• Earl Zimmerman, stationed at Roswell base in 1947, corroborated Rickett’s story about assisting Dr. La Paz: Affidavit: “I heard many rumors about flying saucers in the [officer’s] club and around the base, including something about investigating the discovery of one under the guise of a plane crash investigation. At about this time, I saw Eighth Air Force commander General Roger Ramey in the O club more than once. On a couple of these occasions, he had Charles Lindbergh with him and I heard they were on the base because of the flying saucer business. …In early 1949, after being transferred to OSI in Albuquerque, I worked with Dr. Lincoln La Paz of the University of New Mexico on an extended project… We were told the Air Force was concerned about "something" being in the night sky over Los Alamos… [See Green Fireballs] When I mentioned to him I had been stationed in Roswell during 1947, he told me he had been involved in the investigation of the thing found in the Roswell area that summer. …he went out with two agents and interviewed sheepherders, ranchers, and others. They told these witnesses they were investigating an aircraft accident.” ^[31]

• Colonel Edwin Easley, Roswell base Provost Marshal in charge of the Military Police. When asked what happened, he said he had sworn a security oath and couldn’t talk about it. However, when asked if the extraterrestrials theories was the right path to follow, Easley replied, “Let’s put it this way. That’s not the wrong path.” ^[32] It is also claimed that Easley’s doctor, Harold Granik, and a daughter, reported that Easley spoke about the “creatures” at Roswell on his deathbed. ^[33]

• Lydia Sleppy was a Teletype operator working at an Albuquerque radio station in 1947. She said they received a telephone call from John McBoyle of KSWS Radio in Roswell. In her affidavit she recalled McBoyle saying, "There's been one of those flying saucer things crash down here north of Roswell." He'd met Brazel in a coffee shop. Brazel said he'd discovered the object and "had towed it underneath a shelter on his property. Brazel offered to take McBoyle to the ranch to see the object. McBoyle described it as a 'big crumpled dishpan.'" She added the FBI then interrupted the teletype as she tried to send it and ordered that they cease transmission. She said her boss, Karl Lambertz, spoke to McBoyle the next day. "He told Mr. Lambertz the military had isolated the area where the saucer was found and was keeping the press out. He saw planes come in from Wright Field, Ohio, to take the thing away." ^[34] The station owner, Merle Tucker, confirmed hearing the story at the time. In an interview shortly before his death, McBoyle confirmed seeing an object that looked like “a crushed dishpan,” about 25-30 feet long, impacted in a slope. ^[35]

• Bill Brazel Jr. also independently reported that his father towed the largest piece off the field and stored it in a livestock shed. Marcel in one early interview likewise recounted Brazel showing them the largest piece he had found, about 10 feet in diameter, which he had dragged from the field., ^[36]

• Walter Haut, Roswell public information officer, who helped put out the base flying disc press release, mostly denied any other knowledge of the incident. In an affidavit he did state, “I am convinced that the material recovered was some type of craft from outer space.” ^[37] However, in a recorded oral history done in 2000 with researchers Wendy Connors and Dennis Balthaser, whom Haut knew well, he now stated he had direct knowledge. According to them, Haut acknowledged seeing the damaged crashed object, about 25 feet across, which had been taken to the base, and a couple dead or partially living alien bodies. Haut died in December 2005. ^[38]

• Frank Joyce, Roswell radio KGFL news announcer, said he spoke to Brazel when he first reported the incident to Sheriff Wilcox. In earlier interviews, Joyce wouldn't discuss the details of what Brazel told him, saying only that he didn't believe the story, but suggested he report the incident to the base. After Brazel gave his press interview, he called Joyce again and said, "We haven't got the story right." Brazel went to the radio station and told Joyce a balloon story. Joyce responded, "Look, this is completely different than what you told me on the phone the other day about the little green men. Joyce said Brazel responded to the effect, "No they weren't green. Our lives will never be the same again." ^[39] In more recent interviews, as first reported by Tom Carey and Don Schmitt in 199228, Joyce has explained this cryptic conversation by saying Brazel first mentioned small, nonhuman beings when he first spoke to him. Initially Brazel was highly stressed over the large quantities of debris that needed to be cleaned up. "Who's gonna clean all that shit up?" Then Joyce said Brazel really began "losing it," talking about the "horrible stench" from the dead "little people" he had found at another location. Joyce suggested maybe he had found monkeys from a military experiment. "They're not monkeys, and they're not human!" Joyce then went on to explain that his "little green men comment [referred] back to our original phone conversation." ^[40]

• Mortician Glenn Dennis said the Roswell base called him asking for small caskets for three corpses that had been recovered. Soon after, after transporting an injured airman to the base hospital, Dennis said he saw strange metallic objects in an ambulance, ran into a worried nurse friend inside the hospital who warned him to leave, and was then threatened by an officer, who had him thrown out. The next day, he went to the base to meet the nurse. She described an alien autopsy and drew pictures for Dennis of alien corpses she had seen. “She said the head was disproportionately large for the body… There were three bodies; two were very mangled and dismembered, as if destroyed by predators; one was fairly intact. They were three-and-a-half to four feet tall.” They had four long fingers. They had to move the operation to an aircraft hangar because of the horrible stench. ^[41]

• Ruben, Pete, and Mary Anaya, related Ruben receiving a call from the base from New Mexico Lt. Governor Joseph Montoya, a personal friend, to pick him up. (Ruben worked at the base.) Bringing him to their home, Montoya was pale and frightened. He related how a platter-shaped object had crashed. In a hangar, he saw pieces of crash debris and four non-human “little men,” one barely alive, being worked on by doctors. They were short, white, bald and skinny with big eyes and four long fingers. They wore a tight-fitting suit. Montoya warned them not to talk about it or somebody in the government would get them. ^[42]

• Barbara Dugger, granddaughter of Sheriff George Wilcox, said her grandmother, Inez Wilcox once told her what happened: “there was a spacecraft--a flying saucer--that crashed outside Roswell.” After Brazel reported the incident to the Sheriff, he had gone out to the site in the evening. "There was a big burned area, and he saw debris. He also saw four 'space beings.' One of the little men was alive. Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk." The military threatened the entire family with death if he ever talked about it. ^[43]

• Sgt. Thomas Gonzales, in an interview with Don Ecker, editor of UFO magazine, said he helped guard a crash site and saw bodies and the craft. Ecker wrote that Gonzales said he saw “little men.” They were human-looking but had eyes and heads slightly larger than human. The craft was more of an “airfoil” rather than disc shape. Family members confirmed having known about the story for years. ^[44]

• Beverly Bean, daughter of Sgt. Melvin Brown, said her father also helped guard the crash site where alien bodies were recovered. She claimed her father told her he saw two or three alien bodies packed in ice as they drove back to the base in a truck. “He said they were smaller than a normal man--about four feet--and had much larger heads than us, with slanted eyes, and that the bodies looked yellowish, a bit Asian-looking.” That night, he stood guard outside a hangar where either debris or bodies awaited shipment to Texas. [9]

• Sgt. Robert Slusher, B-29 flight engineer, and another crew member, identified only as “Tim”, separately recounted how they were on a highly unusual B-29 flight the next day from Roswell to Fort Worth, Texas. A large wooden crate was loaded into the bomb-bay, chained to the plane, and surrounded by an armed guard. When they arrived at Fort Worth, the crate was met by another armed guard and a mortician known by one of the other crew members, Felix Martucci. On the way back, Martucci said, “We made history.” Slusher recalled,“When we got back, they just said this is a classified mission. Don’t talk about it. Next day, the rumor got out you flew the bodies to Fort Worth.” ^[45] “Tim” similarly said that before they left Roswell they had heard stories about a “spaceship with bodies inside the UFO that had been found on a ranch in the area.” The crew speculated that they had transported wreckage or bodies from the crash. ^[46]

• Steven Lovekin, who served in the White House Army Signal Corp between 1959 and 1961 (handling encrypted and classified White House communications), said he and others received UFO briefings at the Pentagon. According to Lovekin, they were shown a metal beam covered with hieroglyphs and a piece of foil-like debris. They were told it had come from a "New Mexico crash in 1947 of an extraterrestrial craft." Further, "...they did discuss the fact that there were bodies, extraterrestrial bodies... there were either 3 or 5... One was alive, partially alive, at the time that this happened." Lovekin added he heard Pres. Eisenhower talking and worrying about how control was slipping out of government hands and being assumed by corporations tasked with studying the situation. ^[47]

Related testimony from astronaut Edgar Mitchell and Senator [[Barry Goldwater#Interest in UFOs|Barry Goldwater]] further below.

[edit] Accounts of intimidation

• Mortician Glenn Dennis said he received a death threat at the base hospital from a redheaded captain, who warned him if he talked “somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand.” The following day, Sheriff Wilcox talked to his father, a personal friend, and said, “…tell your son that he doesn’t know anything and hasn’t seen anything at the base. They want you and your wife’s name, and they want your and your children’s addresses.” His father told him about the conversation with the Sheriff, so Dennis related the events of the previous day to him. Dennis also claimed that the nurse who confided in him about alien corpses subsequently was shipped off base and attempts to contact her via mail resulted in letters returned with "deceased" marked on the envelopes. ^[48]

• Frankie Rowe, claims her father was a firefighter who on a fire run outside of town encountered a wrecked craft and alien bodies. Later, after seeing a state trooper with a piece of dull gray metallic foil from the downed craft that “would unfold itself”, she and her family were threatened into silence by military personnel who visited her house. She said they told them: "They could take us out in the desert, and no one would ever find us again." In her affidavit she wrote, “I was told that if I ever talked about it, I could be taken out into the desert never to return, or that my mother and father would be taken to ‘Orchard Park’, a former POW camp.” ^[49] Rowe's older sister Helen Cahill said her parents told her a similar story.^[50]

• Barbara Dugger, granddaughter of Sheriff George Wilcox, said her grandmother, Inez Wilcox, told her the Sheriff had gone to the ranch and seen four alien bodies. "My grandmother said 'Don't tell anybody. When the incident happened, the military police came to the jail house and told George and I that if we ever told anything about the incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family would be killed.'" ^[51]Others said that Inez Wilcox told them similar stories.^[52][53]

• The Anaya family (see above) told the story of picking up Lt. Governor Joseph Montoya at the base, and a shaken Montoya relating the story of a crashed craft and seeing four alien bodies in a hangar. Montoya then warned them, and in future visits, not to talk about it because somebody in the government might come after them.

• George "Jud" Roberts was manager of radio station KGFL in Roswell. He signed an affidavit where he claimed to have been threatened if he ran an interview his station had done with Brazel. "I got a call from someone in Washington, D.C. It may have been someone in the office of [New Mexico Senators] Clinton Anderson or Dennis Chavez. This person said, 'We understand that you have some information, and we want to assure you that if you release it, it's very possible that your station's license will be in jeopardy, so we suggest that you not to do it.' The person indicated that we might lose our license in as quickly as three days. I made the decision not to release the story." ^[54]

• Walt Whitmore Jr., son of the KGFL station owner, also recalled how his father had hidden Brazel at their home and done a recorded interview. Whitmore Sr. was unable to get the story through on the Mutual wire and instead began broadcasting a preliminary release locally over KGFL. At this point, a long distance phone call came to the station from a man named Slowie, saying he was with the FCC in Washington. Slowie informed Whitmore that the story involved national security and that if he valued his station license he should cease transmitting it and forget about it. Immediately afterwards, another call from Washington came from Senator Dennis Chavez, who suggested he had better do what Slowie advised. ^[55]

• Frank Joyce, news announcer and disc jockey at KGFL, said he spoke to Brazel by telephone when he first came to town and Brazel described finding nonhuman bodies. (see above) Later, Joyce received the base press release announcing the recovery of a “flying disk” and put it on the United Press teletype. When the first UP bulletins came in on the station teletype, Joyce said the phones went crazy. He received an irate call from a Colonel Johnson at the Pentagon, demanding to know who had told him to issue the press release. Joyce said he was a civilian and couldn’t be ordered around like that, to which the colonel responded, “I’ll show you what I can do to you.” Joyce said he decided to collect and hide the press release copy and the various teletypes so he could later prove to his boss Whitmore that he hadn’t made anything up. Later, somebody came through the station, found some of the hidden material, and removed it. However, some of the original teletypes were not found, and Joyce still has them. Jud Dixon, of United Press in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said the same thing happened in his office. ^[56] However, Karl Pflock said Dixon told him he had no memory at all about the Roswell incident, much less any confiscation. ^[57]

• According to Frank Joyce, rancher Mac Brazel came to the radio station afterwards. “I remember him changing the story. …I told him, what you’re saying is not what you were saying the other night. [He admitted] that he had been told to come in or else. …He told me what they were going to do to us. …He was really scared. …[Brazel said] ‘You’re not going to tell them anything, are you?’” Joyce promised he wouldn’t. Brazel said he had to tell the new story or “it would go hard on him.” ^[58]A number of other witnesses besides Joyce have testified to intimidation of Brazel by the military. They knew about or saw Brazel in military custody, heard him complaining bitterly about his treatment by the military, or Brazel had sworn an oath to the military not to talk about what he had found and afterwards would no longer discuss it.

[edit] Accounts of cover-ups

Lydia Sleppy (see above) was one of the first witnesses to claim the government tried to conceal what happened. She was a Teletype operator working at an Albuquerque radio station in 1947. She said that when she tried to transmit a phoned-in reporter's story of the crashed flying saucer and seeing an object like a smashed dishpan at the Brazel ranch, the FBI cut it off and ordered that they cease transmission. ^[59]

Major Jesse Marcel, Roswell intelligence officer, was ordered to Fort Worth to show Gen. Roger Ramey recovered crash materials. In one interview, he said a photo was taken of him with real debris, but then everything was removed and a weather balloon brought in for subsequent press photos. Marcel made the point about the press photos being “fake” or “staged” and the weather balloon debris substituted in several interviews. In one interview he said he covered up the real Roswell debris he had brought to show Ramey before the press photos were taken. He said he wasn't allowed to talk to anyone except under Ramey's orders.

Some Marcel quotes from interviews:

[Phone interview, Marcel not seeing photo being referenced] "The stuff in that one photo was pieces of the actual stuff we had found. It was not a staged photo. Later, they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. They then allowed more photos. Those photos were taken while the actual wreckage was on its way to Wright Field." ^[60]

[Being shown photo of Ramey with weather balloon] "That's a fake. ...What you see there is nothing but a piece of brown paper that I put over [the real debris] so that the news media couldn't get a picture of what I had. [I covered the real stuff, including in the photo of me you are showing. Ramey told me] 'Just don't say anything. Don't show anything.' ...[Ramey] claimed that it was fragments of a weather balloon. ...I knew it wasn't a weather balloon, and Ramey knew it wasn't a weather balloon. They had the picture made strictly for the press..." ^[61]

"When I got to [Fort Worth] ...I couldn't say anything [to reporters] until I talked to the general. I had to go under his orders. [Ramey] said 'Well just don't say anything." ^[62]

"To get them [the press] off my back, I told them we were recovering a downed weather balloon. ...A balloon, of any kind, could not have exploded and spread its debris over such a broad area ...I was told later that a military team from my base was sent to rake the entire area." ^[63]

Brigadier General Thomas Dubose, chief of staff to Gen. Ramey (and both of whom appear in press photos with weather balloon in Ramey's office), said in an affidavit: "The material shown in the photographs taken in Maj. Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press." In several interviews, like Marcel, he indicated they substituted a balloon they had brought in from elsewhere for the real debris, which he said even he was never allowed to see because of all the secrecy. He said Deputy Chief of the Strategic Air Command, General Clements McMullen ordered him by phone to start a coverup. Several days before the press photos were taken, Dubose said McMullen also ordered a shipment of debris from Roswell to Washington by "colonel courier," and subsequently was flown on to Wright Field for analysis. McMullen ordered absolute secrecy, said Dubose, and said it was so secret it was "beyond top secret." Dubose was not to discuss this with anybody. [10]

Some Dubose quotes:

"There was a host of people descending on our headquarters seeking information from Ramey, badgering him for information we didn't have. I didn't know what it was. Blanchard didn't know. Ramey didn't know... [Gen.] McMullen said, Look, why don't you come up with something, anything you can use to get the press off our back? So we came up with this weather balloon story. Somebody got one and we ran it up a couple of hundred feet and dropped it to make it look like it crashed, and that's what we used." ^[64]

"Actually, it was a cover story, the balloon part of it... Somebody cooked up the idea as a cover story ...we'll use this weather balloon. ...We were told this is the story that is to be given to the press, and that is it, and anything else, forget it. …McMullen told me, ‘You are not to discuss this… this is more than top secret… it’s beyond that. It’s within my priority as deputy to George Kenney, and he in turn responsible to the President, this is the highest priority you can exhibit. And you will say nothing.’”^[65]

(From affidavit) "I received a phone call from Maj. Gen. Clements McMullen, Deputy Commander, Strategic Air Command. He asked what we knew about the object which had been recovered outside Roswell... I called Col. William Blanchard... and directed him to send the material in a sealed container to me at Fort Worth. After the plane from Roswell arrived with the material, I asked the Base Commander, Col. Al Clark, to take possession of the material and to personally transport it in a B-26 to... McMullen in Washington, D.C. ...McMullen told me he would send the material by personal courier on his plane to ...Wright Field. The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy." [11]

Brigadier General Arthur Exon, former commanding officer at Wright-Patterson AFB, stated, "I know that at the time the sightings happened, it was to General Ramey ... and he, along with the people at Roswell, decided to change the story while they got their act together and got the information into the Pentagon and into the president." Also, he said, "all these guys at the top of government" (such as Air Force Chief of Staff Carl Spaatz and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington) ...They were the ones who knew the most about Roswell, New Mexico. They were involved in what to do about the residue from that." ^[66]

Moon-walker and Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has made various public statements about the reality of Roswell: "Make no mistake, Roswell happened. I've seen secret files which show the government knew about it — but decided not to tell the public. I wasn't convinced about the existence of aliens until I started talking to the military old-timers who were there at the time of Roswell. The more government documentation on aliens I was told about, the more convinced I became." ^[67] Mitchell has also spoken about bodies: "A few insiders know the truth . . . and are studying the bodies that have been discovered." Mitchell added that a cabal of insiders stopped briefing Presidents after Kennedy. ^[68]

Senator Barry Goldwater also publicly related many times being aware of a special room at Wright-Patterson where alien artifacts were kept. He tried to get his good friend, General Curtis LeMay, USAF Chief of Staff, to get him access. But LeMay gave him “holy hell” and told Goldwater never to bring it up again. Goldwater said the information was classified “above top secret” and was impossible to get at, despite his trying for many years.^[69]

[edit] References