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. 5 …Since 1978-1980, other UFO researchers, most notably Donald Schmitt and Kevin Randle, claim to have…
  • p. 7 …Randle and Donald Schmitt; The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, (1994) also by Randle…
been any previous documentary evidence produced by those
who would debunk the incident to show that somethinq did
not happen; althouqh loqic dictates that bureaucracies
do not spend time documentinq non-events.
SEARCH STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY
To insure senior Air Force leadership that there were no
hidden or overlooked files that might relate to the
"Roswell Incident;" and to provide the GAO with the best
and most complete information available, SAF/AAZ
constructed a strategy based on direct tasking from the
Office of the Secretary, to elicit information from
those functional offices and organizations where such
information might logically be contained. This included
directing searches at current off ices where special or
unusual projects might be carried out, as well as
historical organizations, archives, and records centers
over which the Air Force exerted some deqree of control.
Researchers did not, however, go to the US Army to
review historical records in areas such as missile
launches from White Sands, or to the Department of
Energy to determine if its forerunner, the Atomic Energy
Commission, had any records of nuclear-related incidents
that might have occurred at or near Roswell in 1947- To
do so would have encroached on GAO's charter in this
matter. What Air Force researchers did do, however, was
to search for records still under Air Force control
pertaining to these subject areas.
In order to determine parameters for the most productive
search of records, a review was first conducted of the
major works regarding the "Roswell Incident" available
in the popular literature. These works included: The
Roswell Incident, (1980) by William Moore and Charles
Berlitz; "Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search of Proof,"
(1985) by Moore; The UFO Crash at Roswell, (I 99 1) by
Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt; The Truth About the UFO
Crash at Roswell, (1994) also by Randle and Schmitt; The
Roswell Report: A Historical Perspective, (1991), George
M. Eberhart, Editor; "The Roswell Events," (1993)
compiled by Fred Whiting- Crash at Corona (1992) by
Stanton T. Friedman and Don Berliner, as well as
numerous other articles written by a combination of the
above and other researchers. Collectively, the above
represent the "pro" UFO writers who allege that the
government is engaged in a conspiracy. There are no
specific books written entirely on the theme that
nothing happened at Roswell. However, curtis Peebles in
Watch the Skies! (1994) discussed the development of the
UFO story and growth of subsequent claims as a
phenomenon. There has also been serious research as well
as a number of detailed articles written by so-called
"debunkers" of Roswell and other incidents, most notably
Philip J. Klass who writes The Skeptical Inquirer
newsletter, and Robert Todd, a private researcher. The
concerns and claims of all the above authors and others
were considered in conducting the USAF records search.
It was also decided, particularly after a review of the
above popular literature, that no specific attempt would
be made to try to refute, point by point, the numerous
claims made in the various publications. Many of these
claims appear to be hearsay, undocumented, taken out of
context, self-serving, or otherwise dubious.
Additionally, many of the above authors are not even in

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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.