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In July 1995 the U.S. General Accounting Office issued report GAO/NSIAD-95-187 to Representative Steven H. Schiff on its search for government records about the 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico. GAO found that some Roswell Army Air Field records, including outgoing messages from 1946 to 1949, had been destroyed with no stated authority. Only two 1947 records turned up: a 509th Bomb Group history and an FBI teletype. Both describe the recovered object as a radar-tracking or weather balloon.
B-262046 happened near Roswell in July 1947 and that all available official materials indicated the most likely source of the wreckage recovered was one of the project MOGUL balloon trains. At the time of the Roswell crash, project MOGUL was a highly classified U.S. effort to determine the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research using balloons that carried radar reflectors and acoustic sensors. (A copy of DOD’s response appears in app. VII.) Central Intelligence Agency In March 1995, the CIA’s Executive Director responded to our letter of inquiry by stating that earlier searches by the CIA for records on unidentified flying objects produced no information pertaining to the Roswell crash. The Executive Director added, however, that it was unclear whether the CIA had ever conducted a search for records specifically relating to Roswell. In the absence of such assurance, the Executive Director instructed CIA personnel to conduct a comprehensive records search for information relating to Roswell. On May 30, 1995, the CIA’s Executive Director informed us that a search against the term “Roswell, New Mexico,” in all CIA databases produced no CIA documents related to the crash. (A copy of CIA’s response appears in app. VIII.) Agency Comments A draft of this report was provided to DOD for comment. DOD offered no comments or suggested changes to the report. The Chief Archivist, National Personnel Records Center offered several comments clarifying matters dealing with records management. These comments have been incorporated into the final report where appropriate. The CIA, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the National Security Council, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy also received excerpts from the report discussing the activities of their respective agencies. They had no substantive comments and made no suggested changes to the report. Scope and Methodology To determine the requirements for reporting air accidents in 1947, we interviewed military service records management officials, reviewed military record-keeping regulations in effect during this time period, and examined Army Air Forces and Navy air accident reports. We also sought to identify any government records related to the Roswell crash. In this regard, we visited and reviewed records at the locations listed in table 1. GAO/NSIAD-95-187 Government RecordsPage 6
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