Why Jesse A. Marcel Dropped out of the Investigation

People occasionally ask me why Jesse Marcel, Sr. was left out the investigation once he had returned from the Debris Field with samples of the strange, metallic material. They say that you don’t leave your Intelligence Officer out of the investigation.

Good question and interesting point.

Fran Ridge and I were discussing who ran security at the Impact Site, he mentioning Robert T. Darden and me saying it was Major Edwin Easley. The documentation seemed to be on my side in this, but that doesn’t matter here. The point was that it caused me to review the transcripts of the separate interviews with Bill Rickett conducted by Don Schmitt and Mark Rodeghier. Turns out there was a clue about why Marcel disappeared from the event after he had gone out of the Debris Field.

Rickett, in describing his trip to the Impact Site, mentioned that they had expected Marcel to be there, but he wasn’t. Given the time line, the reason was that Marcel had been sent to Fort Worth with samples of the debris. While the investigation was continuing in Roswell, and had shifted to the Impact Site where the craft and bodies were found, Marcel was in Fort Worth meeting, first with General Ramey and later with the press. Although Marcel had been ordered not to say anything to reporter J. Bond Johnson, who took six photographs of the balloon debris, he was later quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegraph about what he had seen.

Don Schmitt and me on the Impact Site. It was much closer
to Roswell than the Debris Field near Corona.

By the time that Marcel returned from Fort Worth, the clean up on the Impact Site had been completed, the material taken to the base and stored in a hangar there.

Marcel was out of the loop for two reasons. First, he had been identified in the press release, which made him a target for reporters. That wasn’t a problem, because, he was in Fort Worth while the investigation and clean up continued in Roswell. Once Ramey declared it was a weather balloon, the reporters disappeared. Second, by the time he returned, the investigation, such as it was, had been completed in Roswell. If the craft was alien, the information about it would have been classified as top secret. There was no reason to expose Marcel to what had been learned while he was in Fort Worth. There was nothing he could add to the discussion at that point.

Did Marcel know about the recovery of the bodies? I would say, based on my experience as an Intelligence Officer, probably. But he hadn’t seen them. He had heard about them but he was uncomfortable talking about something that he hadn’t seen with his own eyes. He had seen the debris field and tested some of the debris. He said that it was from something that had not been made on Earth. He had not seen the bodies. As I say, I suspect that he had heard the rumors, but to him they were only rumors. He didn’t mention them for that reason.

It was Rickett’s statement about Marcel coming out to the Impact Site that sort of triggered these thoughts. You don’t expose more people to the secrets than are necessary. With the cleanup complete, there was no reason to bring Marcel into the event. It was over.

In fact, it seems that Marcel had asked Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC OIC in Roswell about a report he had written. Cavitt refused to show it to him, suggesting again, that Marcel had no need to know. The event was over.

And Ben Franklin had said that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. You simply did not provide information to someone who had no need to know, and by the time Marcel returned from Fort Worth, he had no need to know.

Okay, let the firestorm begin… I just handed in the book manuscript that I have been working on these last several months and am between projects. For those keeping score at home, I’m about to begin another of the Vietnam Ground Zero books written by “Eric Helm.”