Documents / Report

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. 15 …and Maj Jesse Marcel. Capt. William E. Anderson said it was from a flying saucer. After…
Blanchard, went on leave on July 8, 1947, which would be
a somewhat unusual maneuver for a person involved in the
supposed first ever recovery of extraterrestrial
materials. (Detractors claim Blanchard did this as a
ploy to elude the press and go to the scene to direct
the recovery operations). The history and the morning
reports also showed that the subsequent activities at
Roswell during the month were mostly mundane and not
indicative of any unusual high level activity,
expenditure of manpower, resources or security.
Likewise, the researchers found no indication of
heightened activity anywhere else in the military
hierarchy in the July, 1947, message traffic or orders
(to include classified traffic). There were no
indications and warnings, notice of alerts, or a higher
tempo of operational activity reported that would be
logically generated if an alien craft, whose intentions
were unknown, entered US territory. To believe that such
operational and high-level security activity could be
conducted solely by relying on unsecured
telecommunications or personal contact without creating
any records of such activity certainly stretches the
imagination of those who have served in the military who
know that paperwork of some kind is necessary to
accomplish even emergency, highly classified, or
sensitive tasks.
An example of activity sometimes cited by pro-UFO
writers to illustrate the point that something unusual
was going on was the travel of Lt. General Nathan
Twining, Commander of the Air Materiel Command, to New
Mexico in July, 1947. Actually, records were located
indicating that Twining went to the Bomb Commanders'
Course on July 8, along with a number of other general
officers, and requested orders to do so a month before,
on June 5, 1947 (Atch 14).
Similarly, it has also been alleged that General Hoyt
Vandenberg, Deputy Chief of Staff at the time, had been
involved directing activity regarding events at Roswell.
Activity reports (Atch 15), located in General
Vandenberg's personal papers stored in the Library of
Congress, did indicate that on July 7, he was busy with
a "flying disc" incident; however this particular
incident involved Ellington Field, Texas and the Spokane
(Washington) Depot. After much discussion and
information gathering on this incident, it was learned
to be a hoax. There is no similar mention of his
personal interest or involvement in Roswell events
except in the newspapers.
The above are but two small examples that indicate that
if some event ha~pened that was one of the "watershed
happenings" in human history, the US military certainly
reacted in an unconcerned and cavalier manner. In an
actual case, the military would have had to order
thousands of soldiers and airman, not only at Roswell
but throughout the us, to act nonchalantly, pretend to
conduct and report business as usual, and generate
absolutely no paperwork of a suspicious nature, while
simultaneously anticipating that twenty years or more
into the future people would have available a
comprehensive Freedom of Information Act that would give
them great leeway to review and explore government
documents. The records indicate that none of this

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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.