Jesse Marcel Jr., Linda Marcel
The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site
This book is dedicated to Jesse A. Marcel, Sr., Major, United States Army Air Force.
Acknowledgments
The list of people to whom this book should be dedicated is most certainly longer than would fit on a few pages. For the sake of brevity, I will list those who come to mind most readily. First and foremost, I dedicate this book to an Army Air Force officer, my greatest hero with his eyes to the skies. Dad, I have kept my promise!
My wife, Linda, has stood beside me through more than any woman should be expected to endure. She has goaded me-always lovingly-to do what we both knew I needed to do, allowed me to rant at the injustices of the world, and reassured me when I felt that life was most unfair.
To Dr. Herb Brosz - a down-to-earth Montana cowboy.
To all my kids, we've had our great times, as well as some not so great, but I think that each of you know that I've always loved you.
To my fellow men and women in arms, I cannot begin to express the pride I feel for having been so privileged as to serve with you. May you all be kept safe, and feel the honor you so greatly deserve.
To Stan Friedman, what can I say? Your unbending quest for truth has been an inspiration to me, and I am ever grateful for your support throughout the years.
To Ron Kaye and Connie Schmidt, I give my thanks for turning decades of memories into a book in which my father and I can take real pride.
And finally, to you, my readers. It is my hope that you will always seek-and find-truth, and that one day, the world will look at you and share your hunger. May your lives be filled with wonder, every day.
Foreword by Stanton T. Friedman
I had no idea when I first heard the name Jesse Marcel that 28 years later I would still be involved in the investigation of the phenomenon known as the Roswell Incident. I was at a TV station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1978, to do three different interviews to help promote my lecture "Flying Saucers ARE Real" at Louisiana State University that evening. The first two interviews had gone off without a hitch. Unfortunately, the third reporter was nowhere to be found in those pre-cell-phone days. The station manager was giving me coffee, apologizing, looking at his watch. He knew the woman who had brought me to the station for the university, and that other activities were scheduled. We were just chatting, when, out of the blue, he said, The person you ought to tall, to is Jesse Marcel."
Being the outstanding UFO investigator and the nuclear physicist that I am, my response was really not very sharp. "Who is he?" I asked. My teeth practically fell out when he said, "Oh, he handled wreckage of one of those saucers you are interested in when he was in the military."
"What? What do you know about him? Where is he?"
"He lives over in Houma. He's a great guy. We are old ham radio buddies. You ought to talk to him!"
By this time the reporter had shown up. Fortunately the launch window had been just long enough for another UFO case to be brought up. The interview was done, and there was a great crowd that night at LSU. The next day, from the airport, I called telephone information in Houma. I had no idea where it was, other than that it was in Louisiana. There was a listing for a Jesse A. Marcel, so I called him.
I mentioned the TV station manager as a kind of reference, and then we spoke for some while. Jesse told me his story about his involvement in the recovery of strange wreckage outside Roswell, New Mexico, in company with Counter Intelligence Corps officer Sheridan "Cav" Cavitt, on orders from Colonel William Blanchard, the base commander. Jesse had been a major, the base intelligence officer. The story of what happened has since been told in numerous books, such as The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, and Crash at Corona by Don Berliner and myself.
Jesse noted that he had been told not to say anything, but that just after the incident occurred, his picture had appeared in newspapers all over the United States, and some overseas. The "official" explanation was that what was recovered was just a weather balloon radar reflector. But Marcel never believed that, and the notion that neither he nor Colonel Blanchard (who was later a four-star general) could not recognize such a common device was absurd.
The problem for me was that, at first, Jesse didn't remember the precise date of the incident. Yet his story was credible, and it whetted my curiosity. I knew that the summer of 1947 had been a very busy flying saucer time, beginning with the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting in June, and escalating in the next few weeks. But I really didn't have enough to go on at that point.
So, after speaking with Jesse, I filed the story in my gray basket and shared it with Bill Moore, whom I knew because we had both earlier been active in the UFO Research Institute of Pittsburgh back in the late 1960s. Bill had moved to Minnesota, and I was living in Hayward, California, and lecturing all over. A few months later, after a lecture to a packed hall that I gave at Bemidji State College in Bemidji, Minnesota, I was quietly approached, at my table of papers, by Vern and Jean Maltais, who asked if I had heard anything about a crashed saucer in New Mexico. I said I had heard something, but wanted to know more. They spoke of the experience of their friend Grady "Barney" Barnett, who had worked for the soil conservation service out of Socorro, New Mexico. Barnett had seen a crashed saucer and strange bodies, and was chased off by the military along with some college people who were also there. But the Maltaises didn't have an exact date either. I obtained phone and address contact information from them, and the next day I passed them on to Bill Moore, who was then teaching in Minnesota.
Bill found a third story about a crashed saucer in New Mexico in the English magazine, Flying Saucer Review. This story was about an English actor, Hughie Green, who had heard a story on the radio while driving from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. He was able to pin down the date as early July, 1947, as such trips were not very common back then. Bill went to the Periodicals Department at the University of Minnesota Library and found the story. This was a real boost, as it named other people that were involved, and validated what Jesse had said. On July 8, 1947, many evening newspapers all over the United States carried the very exciting story of a crashed saucer (sometimes called a disc) recovered by a rancher outside Roswell.
This began an intensive research effort that lasted years for Bill and me. In 1980, the first book, The Roswell Incident by Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz (of Bermuda Triangle fame), was published. Bill and I had done most of the work, finding 62 people in those preInternet times. By 1985 we had published about five papers, presented mostly at annual meetings of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). We had spoken with 92 people. We both had spoken to Dr. Jesse Marcel, and had been very favorably impressed.
Around 1988, a rather strange TV broadcast called UFO Cover-up? Live done in Washington, D.C., had been set up by Bill, working with Jaime Shandera, a Hollywood TV producer. Jesse was brought in for it, as was I. At the time I was living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and Bill was living in Southern California.
I'd actually known Jaime for quite a few years. He had contacted me before I moved to New Brunswick, and had brought Bill in to help with doing a script for a short-lived movie project. They continued to work together, and kept me informed. Meanwhile, in 1978, I had been heavily involved as co-script writer, technical advisor, and on location for the production of UFOsARE Real, a 93-minute documentary for Group One of Hollywood. Major Marcel was one of the people we interviewed, and that's when I finally went to Houma to meet him in person.