Documents / FOIA release

roswell

Office of the Secretary of Defense · 993 pages · text from the file's own layer

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published in 1995 by Headquarters United States Air Force. It was written in response to Representative Steven H. Schiff's request and a General Accounting Office audit, and it contains Col. Richard L. Weaver's report and 1st Lt. James McAndrew's synopsis, along with attachments, appendices and photographs. The report says researchers found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concludes that the 1947 debris came from a Project MOGUL balloon train.

  • p. 15 …Ramey Col William H. Blanchard Maj Gen Clements McMullen Brig Gen Donald N. Yates Albert P…
  • p. 29 …Similarly, two authors, William L. Moore and Charles Berlitz, also engaged in research which led them…
  • p. 31 …The Roswell Incident (1980) by William Moore and Charles Berlitz; "Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search of…
  • p. 206 …incident"( it was in about 1980 that William Moore contacted me and asked questions about balloons…
  • p. 217 …the books that have been written by William Moore, and Randall Schmidt, and others, a lot…
  • p. 254 PROFESSOR MOORE - 6/8/94 38 diameter General Mills balloons. We had a very successful set…
  • p. 262 …One thing I should mention is that after I had visited from William Moore around •so…
  • p. 760 …Ben17 Itammenzind Ralph Morrell James Smith William lneer Duties Qualifications Computations & Equip- Undergraduate Elec. ment Construction…
Colonel Albert Trakowski
29 June 1994
Q: We have [concluded) independently from several other researchers the fact that MOGUL
is probably responsible for the so-called Roswell incident... The Air Force position on that is that it was
a misidentified balloon. The balloon was not a weather balloon, but was then a classified project, Project
MOGUL, which has since been declassified.
What we have not found is any documented evidence that there was a planned cover story related
to Project MOGUL. Jim has culled through literally millions of pages in various archives and repositories
trying to find some sort of documented evidence where somebody at some level has stated that a cover
story of weather research or weather-related activities would be used for Project MOGUL, the real purpose
of which was nuclear detection ...
(Pause)
A: ... All of that is to say that I know these people, and I know of what their involvement was,
so I can at least give credibility and corroboration to what it was they did and where they fit in the
picture.
There have been several writers who have been interested in this story, and they have been in
touch with me. I have given them a lot of words, and in some cases documents that I had in my personal
files. They were at first a Charles [Robert) Todd, from Ardmore, Pennsylvania, who was writing a story,
and I never quite could determine whether he was on the side of the believers in UFOs or was writing to
refute the believers. That I really was unsure of. One thing, he did appear to be sincere in getting the facts
that surrounded the matter.
Another was a Charles Ziegler, a professor of physics at Brandeis University who was writing a
monograph or perhaps a book on the history of nuclear weapons detection. It figured, of course, that
Project MOGUL would come into view. So he had done a great deal of documentary searching and had
found some documents that I did not have. For example, the original letter from Maurice Ewing to Carl
Spaatz, then Chief of Staff of the Air Force. And some of the original letters of General Spaatz directing
the establishment of Project MOGUL. All of this Charles Ziegler apparently found, and I did not have them
at all.
Another fellow recently came into view, a Carl Pflock from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He
appeared to want to substantiate the existence of the UFO incident as a UFO. I have a tape here, a one-
sided tape, my half of the conversation only, with him. You're welcome to listen to that.
Charlie Moore has been in it since the beginning. Charlie was not a general project scientist or
engineer on Project MOGUL. His efforts were confined to the development of the constant level balloons
which were the instrument carriers for the devices that we hoped would pick up the sound waves operating
in the sound channel in the stratosphere. The constant level balloon was the lifting mechanism, and Charlie
was the principal in the development of that.
All of these things I have recorded on this tape to Mr. Pflock and also on the tapes that I made
for Ruth Liebowitz, the historian at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center.

Cases discussed

About this file

FOIA release, from the osd collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 993 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.