Documents / Official release
This file, released by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library under FOIA request 2006-0476-F, holds White House correspondence records for case 243544. In a July 8, 1997 letter to President Clinton, Kent Jeffrey of the International Roswell Initiative submitted more than 20,000 signed copies of the Roswell Declaration, which asks for an Executive Order declassifying UFO information. On December 9, 1997 the Air Force replied that such an order was unnecessary because declassification under E.O. 12958 was already underway.
“William Moore”1 page
MUFON UFO JOURNAL Some of these attacks have been extended to Jesse Marcel, Jr., which I find as tounding. As I have already mentioned, he is as sincere and honest as anyone I have ever known. Like his father before him, he served his country during time of war. June Number 350 'Page 14 One could also lay tough, paper-backed foil on the ground and p<?und away with a sledge hammer and quite possibly not dent it. Interestingly, the sledgehammer test was only hearsay, anyway. One of the airmen allegedly performed the test and told Marcel about it after wards. This is possibly a good example of how rumors and myth begin. Besides, if this material was so indestructible, why did it break up into hundreds or thousands of little pieces? The real answer is, of course, that it was not so indestruc tible because it was from an ML-307 radar re flector that was apparently dragged across the ground as the balloon array descended. The Witnesses The testimony of the late Jesse Marcel, Sr., is probably the most important, as well as the most controversial, of the whole Roswell story. In essence, it forms the foundation around which the rest of the case is built. However, because the debris he recovered was not extraterrestrial, it could not have been what he said it was. That does not mean, however, that he did not believe it was extraterrestrial. In my opinion, it is very possible, if not highly probable, that he sincerely believed until the day he died that the material was something, as he once put it, "not of this earth." A less-than-perfect memory of events so long ago, in combination with the suspicion on his part of a coverup above his level of security or outside his need to know, makes such a sce nario entirely plausible. Unfortunately, because of minor, almost triv ial, inconsistencies in some of the things Jesse Marcel, Sr., said, or is believed to have said, some have made caustic personal attacks against a man no longer around to defend himself and who was, in all probability, telling the truth as he recalled it. I have now spoken with a num ber of men from the 509th Bomb Group who knew Major Marcel. All had nothing but the highest regard and respect for him. Some of these attacks have been extended to Jesse Marcel, Jr., which I find astounding. As I have already mentioned, he is as sincere and honest as anyone I have ever known. Like his father before him\ he served his country during time of war. Few people know it, but he was se riously injured during the Vietnam War when his helicopter was shot down, killing everyone else on board. Like all of us, Jesse might not have 100 percent perfect recall of every past event, but I would never question his word. In a way, because the debris recovered out side of Roswell in 1947 was not extraterrestrial, none of the other witness testimony really mat ters. If the story of a highly unusual and totally unprecedented event is killed at the source, sub sequent cOlToborating testimony goes out the window. For example, in the summer of 1993, a man from Seattle, Washington, made the un precedented claim that he had found a hypoder mic syringe inside a sealed can of Pepsi Cola. The story was picked up by the media, and within days there were copycat claims against the Pepsi Cola Corporation all over the country. Unfortunately for those who jumped on the bandwagon, the original claim turned out to be false. Where did that leave the subsequent claimants? Out on a limb that had been cut off, and, in this particular case, facing up to $250,000 in fines and five years in jail. The testimony of some of the other Roswell witnesses has been all but validated in the public eye because of repeated media coverage. For this reason I will address a couple of cases. Former mortician Glenn Dennis and the elu sive nurse, Naomi Self, who supposedly wit nessed alien autopsies at the base hospital is one of the best-known elements of the 1947 Roswell event. Although I know and like Glenn Dennis on a personal level, I have to say that his story has lost all credibility. Glenn, incidentally, has been fully aware of the fact that researchers have been spending time and resources in an effort to locate a "Naomi Self." There was already significant circumstantial evidence to indicate that no such nurse ever ex isted, when a diligent young researcher from Arizona, Vic Golubic, all but confirmed the fact. He located the records of the Cadet Nurse Corps, where all nurses for the military were trained during the mid-1940s. When Golubic checked with Dennis about the correct spelling of "Self' and informed him about the Cadet Nurse Corps records, Dennis changed his story, telling Golubic that Self was not really the cor rect last name after aIL Dennis, without giving a good reason for not doing so, also refused to tell Golubic the "real" last name. Sorry, Glenn, end of story. Both my father and I got to know Frank Kaufman very well and consider him a friend. However, as with Dennis, I have to say that in view of what we now know, there is no way that Kaufman's fantastic tale of a crashed spaceship with alien bodies could have any basis in reality. According to Kaufman's story, he was one of nine military men at the top-secret recovery op eration 35 miles north of town. Other than Kaufman; the only other living member of the "original nine" was a General Robert Thomas. The last time my father and I were in Roswell, Kaufman showed us some of his pic 1997
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 47 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.