The Decline of Roswell

Back in 1988, when Don Schmitt and I began our investigation into the Roswell case, there were no documents available, other than newspaper articles and a single report from the FBI. The newspaper reports were less than accurate with misspellings of names, and descriptions of the debris. The FBI document, which was based on an interview with Major Kirton (misspelled as Curtan in the FBI report) suggested that the object found was a weather balloon and a radar reflector. It also mentioned that this analysis was not verified by other sources.

It is unclear in the report if the FBI called the 8^th Air Force to find out what was happening or if Kirton had called the FBI to tell them about the recovery. Given the timing of the telex and breaking news, it is more likely that Kirton had called the FBI. That actually isn’t overly important here. I just thought I would mention it as an interesting observation.

Neither the newspaper articles nor the FBI telex do anything to help us understand the Roswell case. There is too little information in them for any conclusive analysis. We are left with questions about the identity of the object found and both the telex and the newspapers can be used to support almost any explanation for Roswell.

But that isn’t the whole story and here I will probably annoy my pals who accept Roswell as an alien spacecraft crash, and may even offend those who believe the answer can be found somewhere on Earth. Since Don and I began our work, other documents have surfaced and been brought into the discussion.

One the first, which was published in its entirety in The MUFON UFO Journal for July 1985, is a top-secret report entitled Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79 and dated December 10, 1948. There is another version of it, or rather the same report, but it is dated April 28, 1949. Neither version of this report makes mention of crash recovered debris, and in fact, says that the origin of the objects cannot be determined. The thinking is that the men responsible for the report, who had top security clearances, would have been able to learn about the Roswell crash had it happened. Since they make no reference to it, this is circumstantial evidence that there wasn’t a crash.

There was a caveat in that report. The officers involved suggested that there needed to be better communication among the military branches to ensure a free flow of information. There could have been some project or information that would have explained everything about the flying saucers if such a free flow existed. In other words, this doesn’t exclude Roswell.

Col. Howard McCoy

Karl Pflock, among others, found another document that reported on the Scientific Advisory Board Conference held on March 17 – 18, 1948, in the Pentagon. Colonel Howard McCoy was discussing Project Sign, the number of reports they had received, suggesting that there was something important going on. He said, “I can’t tell you how much we would give to have one of those crash in an area so that we could recover whatever they are.”

McCoy was the intelligence officer at Wright Field and the Air Materiel Command. He was Nathan Twining’s intelligence officer. If there had been a crash near Roswell, McCoy would have been involved in the study or reverse engineering of anything recovered. In fact, McCoy had been involved in the first of the investigations of unidentified aerial phenomena starting with the Foo Fighters in WW II. He was the guy who knew everything about them and was, you might say, Twining’s “go to guy.” If there had been a crash he would have known about it.

General Nathan F. Twining

There are those who say, me among them, that had Roswell involved the crash of an alien spacecraft, it would have been classified top secret. Given that, McCoy was restricted from mentioning this in a briefing that was only classified as secret and some of the participants in it might not have held the proper security clearances to hear top secrets.

But I have always worried about that analysis. While he might not be able to discuss a crash in a conference that was only secret, I wondered why bring it up at all. If none of the participants was thinking in terms of a crash, he had just planted the idea in their minds. True, he had told them that nothing had been recovered and if you know something doesn’t exist, you are not inclined to look for it. Still this was not a good idea. He planted the seed.

This wasn’t the only time that McCoy had brought up the possibility of crash debris. In a letter sent up the chain of command, to those who would have held the proper security clearances and who would have had the need to know. He expressed the same thought. Crash recovered debris would go a long way to answering questions about the identity of the flying saucers.

McCoy sent that letter to the Chief of Staff on November 3, 1948, discussing flying saucers. This was a recap of what they knew, or thought they knew about the “Flying Objects.” In paragraph 8, McCoy wrote:

The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored. However, tangible evidence to support conclusions about such a possibility are completely lacking.

This becomes more worrisome. McCoy would have no expectation that this letter would be seen by anyone other than those to which it was addressed and it was going to the top guy in the Air Force. He wouldn’t be telling stories out of school and he wouldn’t dare lie. If there had been a crash, he was writing to those who would know about it; more importantly these were the people who had to know about it. They might not have all the specifics, but they would know that there had been a crash of something that was highly unusual. They would know that the craft had been built somewhere else, meaning not on Earth. McCoy would have no reason to lie to them about a crash because of who he was addressing in the letter.

Here's where we stand on this. The documentation that does exist, that came from identified government sources, signed by the men involved who we are able to vet, suggest that they know nothing of crash recovered debris. Being who they were and what their jobs were, they would have known and the discussion would take a different track.

For those believing Roswell involved the crash of an alien spacecraft, this has to be worrisome. It is arrayed against testimony that suggests otherwise. The problem is that it is just testimony and over the years much of that testimony has been found to be inaccurate. The longer we investigate the more of these testimonies have fallen by the wayside.

There is some compelling testimonial evidence of a crash but there is this documentation that suggests otherwise. While that documentation might not completely close the door, it is certainly narrowing the possibility. As I say, for those of us who do attempt to look at all the evidence, this is quite worrisome.