Scanned: Case Number 243544: 42-t-1127712-20060476F-001-001-2013

MUFON UFO JOURNAL
"We are running
down every re
port. I can't even
tell you how
much we would
give to have one
of those crash in
an area so that
we could recover
whatever 1hey
are."
- Col. Howard
McCoy, Chief of
Intelligence, Air
Material Com
mand, Wright
Patterson AFB,
Mareh,1948
June
Number 350
Page 6
would be all but zero. It certainly would be
many orders of magnitude less than the already
infinitesimally small chance of one of today's
twin-engine jetliners having a double-engine
failure.
The 1948 Military Documents
For me, the beginning of the end for the
Roswell UFO case came last spring, when I first
saw. one of a number of previously classified
military documents dealing with unidentified
flying objects. The 289-page document was re
leased under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) in March 1996 in response to a FOIA re
quest by researcher William LaParL It contained
the minutes of the Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board Conference at the Pentagon on March 17
and 18, 1948. Buried in the document was a
very interesting statement by a Colonel Howard
McCoy which referred to a number of unpub
lished UFO reports. The last sentence of
McCoy's statement, however, is devastating to
the Roswell case.
"We have a new project Project SIGN
- which may surprise you as a develo
mentfrom the so-called mass hysteria of
the past Summer when we had all the
unident({iedflying objects or discs. This
can't be laughed oft: We have over 300
reports which haven't been publicized in
the papers from very competent personel,
in many instances - men as capable as
Dr. K. D. Wood, and practically all Air .
Force, Airline people with broad exper
(mce. We are running down every report.
I can't even tell you how much we would
give to have one ofthose crash in an area
so that we could recover whatever they
are. "
My first reaction to this statement was one of
disbelief. Thoughts came to mind like "This
can't be correct, there must be some mistake,
this guy didn't know," etc. We are probably all
somewhat prone to such initial reactions of de
nial when confronted with facts that conflict
with our preconceived notions of reality or our
established beliefs. Most of the time, however,
common sense, logic, and rationality prevaiL On
the other hand, there is sometimes an invariable
refusal to give up a particular contention or be
lief, no matter how strong the evidence to the
contrary. The result of such refusal is often il
logical speculation and far-fetched scenarios,
concocted in an effort to rationalize away the
facts. It is a pitfall into which even credible re
searchers sometimes tumble.
The statement at the Scientific Advisory
Board Confererice lamenting the fact that the Air
Force did not have a crashed UFO was made by
Colonel Howard McCoy. the Chief of
Intelligence for Air Material Command at
Wright-Patterson AFB. Wright Patterson is
where the Air Force's technical and intelligence
experts are concentrated, even today. It is where
recovered wreckage from a foreign craft of any
kind with the potential for invading our skies
would be taken for technical analysis be it a
MIG 29 or a Klingon battle cruiser. If there had
been a crashed flying saucer recovered outside
ofRoswell, New Mexico, in July 1947, this is
where it would have been taken. As Chief of
Intelligence, Colonel Howard McCoy would
have known about it.
In addition to the minutes of the Air Force
Scientific Advisory Board meeting, there are
other military documents indicating just as un
equivocally that the Air Force was not in posses
sion of any physical evidence with regard to
UFOs. Among these documents is a series of
communiques dealing with "flying object inci
dents in the United States" between Colonel
McCoy at Wright Patterson and Major General
C. P. Cabell, the Director of Intelligence for the
Air Force at the Pentagon. In one of these com
muniques, a letter dated November 8, 1948,
McCoy made three separate references to the
fact that there was no physical or tangible evi
dence from a Hying saucer crash. Cabell used
the information from McCoy's letter for prepa
ration of a memorandum dated November 30,
1948, for Secretary of Defense James ForrestaL
The lack of physical evidenc~ is also men
tioned in a September 23, 1947, letter from
Lieutenant General Nathan Twining,
Commander of the Air Material Command at
Wright Field, to Brigadier General George
Schulgen, a top intelligence official at the
Pentagon. The Twining letter was written less
than three months after the Roswell incident.
The letter is also significant because it makes
reference to the cooperation between the
Engineering Division and the Intelligence
Division at the Wright Patterson complex. This
cooperation is mentioned specifically in regard
to assessing the nature of the mysterious "flying
objects" about which there had been so many
credible reports.
The cooperation between the intelligence and
engineering branches at Wright Patterson is fur
ther corroborated by a "top secret" memoran
dum for the Chief, Air Intelligence Division,
1997