In the Air: U.S. Presidents, Balloons and UFOs
FILE
– FBI special agents assigned to the Evidence Response Team process images of a high-altitude balloon recovered off the coast of South Carolina. The material was processed and transported to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
WASHINGTON-
Three mystery objects shot down by the U.S. military this month again compelled government officials to tamp down speculation of extraterrestrial connections.
Military and civilian sightings of unidentified flying objects have generated sensational headlines going back to the 1940s, repeatedly prompting reporters to ask government officials for explanations.Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at the Munich Security Conference: “I will not reveal classified information by saying this: None of the objects recently launched over North America were from Mars.”
President Joe Biden said during a briefing in the White House: “The current intelligence assessment is that these three objects are most likely balloons associated with private companies, recreational facilities or research facilities that study weather or conduct other scientific research.”
FILE – President Joe Biden speaks about a Chinese surveillance balloon and other unidentified objects shot down by the U.S. military in Washington on Feb. 16, 2023.
During the campaign, presidential candidates vowed to reveal government secrets about the phenomenon of unidentified aircraft. but that will change if he is elected.
Donald Trump confirmed that he had been briefed on the matter, saying, “We look like aliens,” but made it clear that he doesn’t particularly believe people who claim to have seen UFOs and wonder aloud whether they really exist.
Barack Obama said on a late night talk show that after taking office he was asked about aliens and was told that the US government does not keep aliens in a laboratory, as some ufologists claim. Obama confirmed that objects in the sky were moving in unexplained ways.
George W. Bush said in a late-night television debate that as president he would not reveal anything anyone had told him about it, not even his curious daughter.
Bill Clinton expressed interest in the phenomenon, saying during a visit to Northern Ireland in 1996: “If the US Air Force has indeed found alien bodies, they haven’t told me about it.” neither, and I want to know.
Jimmy Carter recounted his close encounter with a floating glowing object that turned from blue to red in 1969, a year before he was elected governor of Georgia, calling it “the most screwed-up thing I ever did.” . One of the first candidates to promise to release “all information” on the issue, he changed course after the 1976 election, saying public disclosure could have “defense implications” and pose a threat to national security .
Harry Truman was perhaps the most knowledgeable American president about unexplained aerial phenomena, having been commander in chief in July 1947 when something unusual occurred in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
Roswell and UFOs
Decades later, I went there to interview several people who claimed to have seen what happened.
Roswell, New Mexico has turned its UFO legacy into a tourism industry. Visitors to this sleepy desert town are greeted by dozens of pairs of hazel eyes staring at them from billboards decorated with alien images and from the windows of Roswell’s fast-food restaurants, souvenir shops and motels.
The International UFO Museum and Research Center features UFO nerd-themed historical exhibitions, documents, photos and artwork. Although the museum convinced few skeptics, conversations with some people who were in the Roswell area in the summer of 1947 led me to believe their stories.
Almost all Roswell witnesses kept the story quiet for about half a century for fear of ridicule, recalling signed oaths of secrecy or threats from military officials.
Walter Haut was 76 years old when I met him in 1999.As one of the few survivors and main character in this story, he walked the halls of the Main Street attraction he helped create. Haut was a member of the 509th Composite Bomb Group, then the world’s only nuclear air force, which dropped warheads on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. After World War II, he served as an information officer at the Roswell Army’s Hiroshima Airport. On July 8, 1947, his commander ordered him to issue an unprecedented press release stating that the Army had recovered a crashed flying saucer in
.
Flying saucers and flying saucers have been in the news for several days.(The acronym UFO, meaning “Unidentified Flying Object,” appeared several decades ago. During World War II, pilots called the mysterious aircraft “Foofighters.”) The Roswell incident was not an isolated incident. They have been spotted in nearly all 48 states over the past two weeks.
A few hours later the first lieutenant.In Top Midday’s press release, the story appeared in Associated Press and United Press reports, as well as on the front pages of afternoon newspapers in the western United States. Later that same day, senior officials outside of New Mexico released a new statement that, in short, said: It doesn’t matter, it’s just a balloon.
It is disputed whether the subsequent announcement was true or a cover-up and whether Col.William Blanchard’s assignment to Haut to distribute flying saucer pressure was the result of an error or misunderstanding. Haut told me, “Of course not.” Blanchard wasn’t wrong. – I’m sure Blanchard has seen excerpts of the footage.
FILE – This photo is from the U.S. Air Force’s “Roswell Report” dated June 24, 1997, about an alleged UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. During the hot air balloon flights, test dummies were placed in insulating bags to protect the temperature. sensitive material. These bags may have been described by at least one witness as “body bags” used to recover alien victims after a flying saucer crash.(US Air Force via AP)
Debris falling from the sky was scattered across a remote ranch about 80 miles (135 kilometers) northwest of Roswell. It was first noticed by farmer Mac Brazell, who was riding his horse on July 3 and observing the aftermath of the previous night’s violent storm. He gathered surprising material and set out to visit his nearest neighbors, the Proctors, eight miles away.
“Now I would say it looks like plastic. But we didn’t have plastic back then,” said Loretta Proctor, who was 85, when I spoke to her during my visit to New Mexico.
Proctor, who died in 2013, reported that the material was brownish-brown with a purple part containing the digits. Although extremely flexible, it was impossible to burn or break with heavy ranch tools.
Proctor, a mother of eight who has driven a school bus on dirt roads for nearly 20 years, bristled at skeptics who portrayed Brazell and her family as naive, misguided country idiots. He pointed out that the United StatesThe military told “at least three different stories” about what happened near his ranch.
The Pentagon’s latest version from 1994 said the accident was part of Project Mogul, an attempt to develop hot air balloons that would fly at consistently high altitudes to acoustically monitor expected Soviet nuclear explosions.
Glenn Dennis was a young undertaker in Roswell in 1947. He believes the Air Force may have found alien bodies in the New Mexico desert after receiving several calls from the Roswell base on July 8th saying she asked him to buy children’s coffins and store fabrics. a body exposed to the sun for several days. He told me that later that day he was transporting a slightly injured soldier to the base hospital and saw strange debris in the slightly open rear door of Field Ambulance
and an unprecedented level of security at the base hospital.She noticed a friend, whom she described as a deeply religious nurse, in the hallway holding a towel over her face.
“He yelled at me, ‘Glenn, run as fast as you can!’” Dennis remembers. Moments later, he said that an army captain had threatened him not to spread rumors and that if he mentioned what had happened, “someone would rip your bones out of the sand.”
The next day he dined with a nurse base for lunch. He said she told him she had been called to take dictation in the makeshift autopsy room that began with the words “shattered bag, two small mutilated bodies.”Dennis said the monastery-trained specialist was almost shocked when she drew the four-fingered alien, whose face bore a striking resemblance to the wide-eyed, slit-mouthed creature that would become ubiquitous on T-shirts, keychains and mugs decades later. . Over coffee, Dennis said she was missing when he tried to call her back to base later that afternoon. Later that week, he was told she was no longer assigned to the base and was never heard from again.
“She asked me to take a secret oath never to reveal her name,” said Dennis, who was 73 when I spoke to her. “So I never did it.He died in 2015.
Memories of events can change over time and depend on what they hear, but in my half century as a journalist I have met thousands of people and I think I have developed a good skill , recognizing when a conversation partner is being evasive, exaggerating or lying. Haut, Brazell and Dennis seemed as sincere as anyone I spoke to.
However, after decades of research, UFO investigators have failed to provide convincing evidence that aliens landed in Roswell. This is tantalizing, perhaps unexciting evidence that could stare skeptics in the face for decades.
A few months before my appearance in Roswell in 1999, there was a digital enhancement to the AP photo dated April 8th July 1947. Ft. Worth Star-Telegram shows Airborne Brigadier General Roger Ramey and Col. Thomas DuBose pose next to parts of a weather balloon radar reflector.In the general’s hands is a seemingly previously illegible telegram. Various experts who study digital enhancements have compiled unencrypted ticker sets that they say include “Roswell NMEX,” “Victims,” ”Rescuers,” “Weather Balloons,” “History” and “Record.”
Skeptics argue that some of these words mean that people are more likely to see what they want to see and that the telegram may be a press release rather than a military message.
FILE – The University of Texas at Arlington Library says there will be a reward for the first person to decipher this note. (Photo courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Photograph Collection, Special Collections, The University of Texas Library, Arlington, Texas)
The University of Texas Library, Arlington, reports that one person has a $10,000 reward for the “first person” or group/workshop that can provide the final reading of Ramey’s memo. (email: rameymemo@gmail.com if you can).
“Nobody won the prize”, Kevin Randle, a member of the library research team that worked on the memo, told VOA.
“Shortly before Covid-19 hit, we rescanned the negative [of the photo], but it revealed no new details,” says Randle, a retired military officer and author of books on UFOs and Roswell. Accident.
Another member of the research team, Brenda McClurkin, head of the library’s special collections and archives, agrees.
“Although technology has advanced, the mystery remains a mystery,” he said.
Steve Herman is VOA’s chief national correspondent. While working for the Discovery Channel, he investigated the Roswell crash in 1999.