From Weekend 1
bour, Loretta Proctor, told him it might earn him some money.
As she later recalled: "We had heard there was a reward and I don't remember how much of a reward but there was a lot of sightings at that time and people were talking about them, so we decided that's what it (the wreckage) was and that he (Mac Brazel) should report it." If Mac Brazel had found the wreckage of an alien space-ship, would he have left it lying on his ranch for three weeks? Or did he suddenly make the unilateral decision that it was in fact UFO wreckage when he heard about the money?
Second, the place: Roswell is no ordinary town: in fact, it is quite extraordinary. Set in the middle of a desert, its wide open spaces and infinite blue skies were the perfect setting for all manner of nuclear testings - indeed, Robert Oppenheimer's first atomic bomb was exploded at a test site not far from Roswell.
More importantly, the Roswell Army Air Base just happened to be the most secretive and strategically vital wing of the entire US military forces. The base was home to the 509th Bomb Group, an elite Air Force squadron which was the only one in the country with the capability of flying and dropping the atomic bomb. It was the Roswell 509th which had dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The amount of secrecy, intrigue and mystery that surrounded the base and the town was phenomenal, especially as the Cold War was about to freeze over. The climate of fear and suspicion was the perfect breeding ground for the Roswell incident.
There is no disputing that something crashed in Roswell, some time between June 14th and July 7th (and based on Mac Brazel's testimony, it is the former date) but if you accept that what crashed was a UFO (with or without our joy-riding aliens), you would expect the military police to cordon large parts of the area off, for there to be heightened activity in military communications (message traffic, etc) given the fact that this would have been the first recovery of material from another world. No such things happened, as documents released under the US Freedom of Information Act testify. So what did crash?
According to official government reports, on foot of their 1994 acknowledgment that the "weather balloon" story was a cover, something called Project Mogul crashed at Roswell.
Again, consider the time and the place: in 1947 there was serious military concern that the Soviets were developing a weaponised atomic device capable of mass destruction within the US. Because the Soviet Union's borders were closed, the military sought to develop a long-range nuclear detection capability. Project Mogul was a series of sophisticated weather balloons that could record Soviet Atomic tests via acoustic echoes in the upper atmosphere - some sources suggest. Mogul was also equipped with the sort of microphone technology that could detect conversations within the Politburo, but the US government is only owning up to the "atomic test detector" part. Hence, when it came to the substitute press-release, they merely substituted one balloon for another and hence also, their desperation to keep any news of their new development secret.
This still doesn't explain everything. What about the undertaker and the nurse? The undertaker, Glenn Dennis, has no one to substantiate his story about the air base ringing him requiring coffins. As for the nurse, the only source for that story is a man who said he bumped into her in one of the hospital's corridors. The man's name? Glenn Dennis. The nurse, according to Dennis, was later transferred to England and shortly afterwards died in a plane crash. When pressed about the nurse's identity, he said he promised her he would never reveal her name. The other man at the air base who corroborated the "alien post-mortem" story? You can read all about it, after paying for the book he has written to tie in with the 50th-anniversary of The Roswell incident, called The Day After Roswell.
A much hyped aspect the 160 people who made statements about the incident pales somewhat when you consider the contradictory nature, and at times sheer implausibility, of their remarks. Also, a number of the claimants make their living from the incident (charging for guided tours, to talk to journalists or appear on television) and, while having a commercial interest in something does not necessarily make it suspect, it does raise questions about authenticity.
The leaked Majestic letter? Thousands of pounds have been spent on attempts to prove its veracity. The general consensus is that it is an elaborate hoax - the phrasing and use of numerals don't match official government correspondence, and nor does the paper used. Also, the presidential signature at the end appears to be a copy of a genuine one taken from another document.
The video footage of the "autopsy"? Again, an elaborate hoax. Ignoring the fact that working on an "alien" autopsy would be about as potentially dangerous as handling plutonium, notice how the "aliens" look identical in their bodily anatomy to humans. Note also that when the "post-mortem" begins, the actual cutting and peeling back of skin is not recorded in real-time.
And finally, that strange material with hieroglyphics Mac Brazel found on his ranch? Just some beams made of balsa wood coated with a special type of glue, it seems. Also, the New York company that had manufactured some of the wood reports it had reinforced the material with some leftover tape that had "pinkish-purple abstract flower-like designs on it". Some cover-up, some conspiracy.
THE town of Roswell will shortly welcome again the world's media as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of "the incident" with all manner of UFO-related activities. Apart from the two commemorative UFO museums already there, there will be concerts, talks, seminars and debates about the crash and its cultural aftermath - as well as phone cards, T-shirts, photos and videos for sale.
If you consider that the number of books about Roswell in publication now exceeds the number of books about the JFK assassination, you are looking at the biggest cover-up of them all - a cover-up that has nothing to do with the US government and everything to do with the cover-up of the mundane truth by those writers TV producers and college lecturer's who have exploited the Roswell incident and the hysteria surrounding it for their own gain.
Still, happy birthday aliens.