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Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident

NSA (declassified documents) · 1994-07 · 22 pages · text from the file's own layer

This July 1994 report from the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (SAF/AAZ) was prepared in response to a General Accounting Office audit that Congressman Steven Schiff requested about the 1947 Roswell Incident. The report describes Air Force searches of records and interviews with people involved, including Sheridan Cavitt. It found no records of a cover-up, alien bodies or extraterrestrial materials. It concludes that the debris found near Roswell most likely came from a Project Mogul balloon that was never recovered.

  • p. 5 …Similarly, two authors, William L. Moore and Charles Berlitz, also engaged in research which led them…
  • p. 7 …The Roswell Incident, (1980) by William Moore and Charles Berlitz; "Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search of…
REPORT OF AIR FORCE RESEARCH REGARDING THE
"ROSWELL INCIDENT"
July 1994
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The "Roswell Incident" refers to an event that
supposedly happened in July, 1947, wherein the Army Air
Forces (AAF) allegedly recovered remains of a crashed
"flying disc" near Roswell, New Mexico. In February,
1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO), acting on the
request of a New Mexico Congressman, initiated an audit
to attempt to locate records of such an incident and to
determine if records regarding it were properly handled.
Although the GAO effort was to look at a number of
government agencies, the apparent focus was on the Air
Force. SAF/AAZ , as the Central Point of Contact for the
GAO in this matter, initiated a systematic search of
current Air Force off ices as well as numerous archives
and records centers that might help explain this matter.
Research revealed that the "Roswell Incident" was not
even considered a UFO event until the 1978-1980 time
frame. Prior to that, the incident was dismissed because
the AAF originally identified the debris recovered as
being that of a weather balloon. Subsequently, various
authors wrote a number of books claiming that, not only
was debris from an alien spacecraft recovered, but also
the bodies of the craft's alien occupants. These claims
continue to evolve today and the Air Force is now
routinely accused of engaging in a "cover-up" of this
supposed event.
The research located no records at existing Air Force
offices that indicated any "cover-up" by the USAF or any
indication of such a recovery. Consequently, efforts
were intensified by Air Force researchers at numerous
locations where records for the period in question were
stored. The records reviewed did not reveal any increase
in operations, security, or any other activity in July,
1947, that indicated any such unusual event may have
occurred. Records were located and thoroughly explored
concerning a then-TOP SECRET balloon project, designed
to attempt to monitor Soviet nuclear tests, known as
Project Mogul. Additionally, several surviving project
personnel were located and interviewed, as was the only
surviving person who recovered debris from the original
Roswell site in 1947, and the former officer who
initially identified the wreckage as a balloon.
Comparison of all informat~on developed or obtained
indicated that the material recovered near Roswell was
consistent with a balloon device and most likely from
one of the Mogul balloons that had not been previously
recovered. Air Force research efforts did not disclose
any records of the recovery of any "alien" bodies or
extraterrestrial materials.
INTRODUCTION
Air Force involvement in the alleged UFO-related
incident popularly known as the "Roswell Incident" began
as the result of a January 14, 1994, Washington Post
article (Atch 1) which announced Congressman Steven

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Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 22 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.