Chapter 3
Government Cover-Up? You Decide
In the 200-plus years of the history of our government and military, there is no other incident for which-even after 60 years have passed-the government has continued to devote time and money to keep the truth of the event from the public. Had the materials found near Roswell in 1947 actually been a weather balloon, as the government initially claimed, subsequent attempts to contest the official story would have merely been ignored as the ramblings of a few unbalanced conspiracy theorists. And even if the materials had been part of a project that was classified at the time-such as the then-TopSecret Mogul balloon-the constant evolution of technology (not to mention the end of the Cold War) would have rendered such a classification moot. Even the technology involved in the most closely held secret of the 20th century, the development in Los Alamos of the atomic bomb, is now readily available in reference books found in every public library, as well as on hundreds of Websites. To claim an ongoing need to conceal the facts surrounding a 60-year-old defensive system is, at best, quaint. To continue to expend efforts to maintain secrecy around it is not only ludicrous, but it also calls into question the motivation of those so obsessed with the efforts.
I am well aware that the "official" reports, including the 1997 Air Force opus, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, claim that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and there is no cover-up anymore. Needless to say, I disagree, and in this chapter I'll give a more detailed explanation of why that is.
Initially, the government claimed that it had recovered a flying disk on a ranch outside of Roswell, but within 24 hours, the story began to change. The new story was that a weather balloon had fallen to earth, rather than a flying disc, and that the public's excitement about the incident was therefore unjustified. According to the revised statements, it was just a case of mistaken identification resulting from the fact that the officers on the recovery team did not know what the components of a weather balloon looked like. I find it amusing that the same government who had paid for my father to attend advanced radar school, where he was required to gain intimate familiarity with radar targets of all types, claimed that he could not recognize a radar target from a weather or Mogul balloon. Were it not for the fact that my father's reputation suffered as a result of these absurdly false statements, perhaps I could enjoy the irony.
When my father examined the debris from the crash site, he knew that it had not come from a weather balloon or radar target, and he reported as much to his commanding officer, Colonel Blanchard, who agreed with his assessment. After Colonel Blanchard had performed his own examination and submitted his report, he had the base information officer issue a public statement, the infamous "flying disc" news report. In the decades that have passed since the event, some have even stated that my father immediately rushed to the press with the story. Obviously, those who would make such allegations knew neither my father nor the dictates of military protocol. In truth, any intelligence officer who made public any potentially controversial information would have faced immediate disciplinary action, especially in the tense environment so pervasive in those early days of the cold war. My father was well aware of this, and the fact that he faced not disciplinary action, but continuously high praise in his subsequent performance evaluations, should put such allegations to rest, once and for all.
In short order, Colonel Blanchard was contacted by General Ramey, the Commander of the 8th Air Force, and ordered to issue a "corrected" statement, in which the material was to be described as debris from a common weather balloon. Blanchard was also ordered to immediately fly the debris to the general's office at Fort Worth Army Air Field so Ramey could examine it himself. General Ramey further specified that my father was to accompany the material on the flight. Once my father had arrived with the debris, General Ramey arranged for a civilian journalist to come to the base and photograph the materials. Following are two of the famous photos taken by photographer James Bond Johnson for the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
The pictures taken in General Ramey's office showed remnants of a genuine Rawin radar target, which is a special type of target tied beneath a free balloon and designed to be an efficient reflector of radio energy. Although you may not be able to see it clearly in the photo, the balloon envelope-the packaging that holds a balloon prior to its being deployed-was also in the background. This is the picture that was released to the public to reinforce the government's contention that there was no reason for excitement. My father was ordered to appear in the photograph holding the weather balloon material for one reason: to support the Army's contention that the officers who had made the initial determination had erred because they did not really know what they were looking at. In the first photograph, my father is shown holding a portion of a radar target, and the look on his face says it alclass="underline" "They've got to be kidding!"
The report the government issued had been carefully constructed. My father was asked to hold what was obviously a remnant of a radar target, with the implication that this was the debris retrieved from the Foster Ranch that my father had showed us in our kitchen. He was further ordered to keep silent, and not to make any comments in the presence of the civilian photographer. I think it was at this time that my dad realized that the cover-up had begun, and that he was going to be stuck in the middle of it, whether he liked it or not.
Besides the look on my father's face, others things in the photograph simply don't add up. The government claimed that the materials shown in the photograph were the retrieved remnants of the crashed balloon, but I'd like to know where that balloon envelope came from. As I mentioned earlier, the envelope is the packaging the balloon is housed in pre-deployment, so a balloon envelope would never be present at a crash site, and the envelope was certainly not part of the debris flown in from Roswell. Obviously, it had to be placed in the photo with the rest of the switched debris to reinforce the idea that the material found at the site was a weather balloon with its accompanying radar target. They even had a weather balloon expert come in and testify-correctly-that the material in the photograph was the remnant of a weather balloon. In short, they pulled out all the stops to confirm their story.
Another interesting point is that others in the office-including the civilian photographer-later reported that the debris photographed in the office had a strong odor of something that had been burned. As I noted in the last chapter, however, there was no odor whatsoever associated with the debris we inspected in our kitchen that night.
Dad later told us that the civilian photographer saw only a small part of the actual debris, and that he was only allowed to observe the real debris-which remained wrapped up-from a distance, as opposed to being allowed to get close enough for a detailed photograph, as he had been allowed to do with the radar target material. Does this mean that there was a mix of genuine debris with debris from a weather balloon? This is indeed what happened, as the foil shown in the photograph was paper-backed, and looked like tin foil and balsa wood sticks, whereas the foil on our kitchen floor did not have a paper backing. In a later interview, the photographer remarked that General Ramey-who would certainly have been able to identify weather balloon materials-had no idea what the materials were. Johnson, the photographer, said, "While shooting the general, I asked him what all this material was. He shrugged and answered something like, `Damned if I know "'