Then, suddenly, on July 9, they move to stop the rumors. Why would they do that on that specific date? What happened to suggest to them that it might be a good idea, not only to stop the talk, but to suppress it?
There is another bit of evidence. Edward Ruppelt, in 1951, took over Project Grudge, the Air Force investigation of flying saucers. Under his leadership, it evolved into Project Blue Book, and it became an real investigation into flying saucers. When his tour there ended, and when he was released from active duty, Ruppelt wrote a book about his experiences. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects is the standard in UFO research and it contains the sort of insider information you would expect from someone with Ruppelt’s credentials.
He writes about the summer of 1947 when no official investigation existed and when there were leaders at the pinnacle of military leadership who were concerned about flying saucers. He wrote, “By the end of July 1947 the security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S.’s atomic arsenal. No one, outside of a few high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, knew what the people in the barbed-wireenclosed Quonset huts that housed the Air Technical Intelligence Center were thinking or doing.”
In other words, there was a reaction to the flying saucer situation and that reaction seems to be dated after the July 8 announcement. This is part of the limited documentation and insider information that we have. Granted, it’s thin, but then, if the recovery was as highly classified as suggested, you would expect the information to be thin.
The Final Word (for now)
Here’s what it all boils down to. On the anti-side, there is some strong documentation to suggest that nothing crashed. There are men who were clearly in Roswell in 1947, some of whom had positions of responsibility and were near the top of the “food” chain at the air base. Some of these men you expect to know something, such as Barrowclough, but who are clearly on the record as saying they had heard nothing, knew nothing, and didn’t believe it.
On the pro side there is little documentation, but solid eyewitness testimony. These were the men who should have known about the crash based on who they were. Many of them, when interviewed, did confirm they knew and even suggested an extraterrestrial explanation. There is limited documentation, but there is some.
And there is the reaction of the military, kept secret, to suggest they were reacting to something extraordinary. Given the nature of the events, and the government propensity for keeping secrets, even when continued classification serves no useful purpose, this lack of information about what was happening at the top of the military pyramid is not surprising.
There is also the question of the dog that didn’t bark, or in others words, the lack of any mention of Roswell in the official records of the Air Force UFO investigation. Although the investigation began in 1948, months after the Roswell case, the files actually begin in June 1947 (and it can be argued that they begin before that based on research done by Blue Book staff members), with the Kenneth Arnold sighting. There are files on many cases that pre-date Roswell, and there are files on cases that were known hoaxes and misidentifications, but there is no mention of Roswell in the files. No note that it was a weather balloon. No suggestion of interviews with the principals of the case. No discussion of the multiple flights out of Roswell with debris, orders from the higher headquarters, and no mention of the front page news throughout the world. According to the Air Force, there is no record that it anything ever happened near Roswell. Yet, there should be.
The only exception to this is a single paragraph in a single newspaper clipping about another case. In that short newspaper article is a note that the officers in New Mexico were rebuked for announcing they had found a flying saucer. Walter Haut told me, repeatedly, that even this wasn’t true. No such rebuke had been issued.
So why is there no mention of Roswell? Was it because those at the higher levels in the military had determined that no one need ask questions? Or was it because they wanted no hint of Roswell in the physical records because of the questions that might be asked? In other words, the dog didn’t bark and that is what is so unusual about the case.
With Roswell today, we know more, we have eliminated much of the confusion that developed over the last decade, and we have some very strong evidence. We have solid eyewitness testimony from reliable sources who can prove they were in Roswell at the right time, they were in a position to know what was happening, and they have confirmed it. Now we need to finish the job, learning exactly what fell, and letting the world in on the greatest secret of the last one thousand years.