The Roswell Report: Case Closed

SECTION ONE
Flying Saucer Crashes
and Alien Bodies
The most puzzling and intriguing element of the complex series
of events now known as the Roswell Incident, are the alleged sightings of
alien bodies. The bodies turned what, for many years, was just another
flying saucer story, into what many UFO proponents claim is the best
case for extraterrestrial visitation of Earth. The importance of bodies and
the assumptions made as to their origin is illustrated in a passage from a
popular Roswell book:
Crashed saucers are one thing, and could well turn out to be
futuristic American or even foreign aircraft or missiles. But alien bodies
are another matter entirely, and hardly subject to misinterpretation.3
The 1994 Air Force report determined that project MOGUL was
responsible for the 1947 events. MOGUL was an experimental attempt
to acoustically detect suspected Soviet nuclear weapon explosions and
ballistic missile launches.4 MOGUL utilized acoustical sensors, radar
reflecting targets and other devices attached to a train of weather balloons
over 600 feet long. Claims that the U.S. Army Air Forces recovered a
“flying disc” in 1947, were based primarily on the lack of identification
of the radar targets, an element of weather equipment used on the long
MOGULballoon train. The oddly constructed radar targets were found by
a New Mexico rancher during the height of the first U.S. flying saucer
wave in 1947.5 The rancher brought the remnants of the balloons
and radar targets to the local sheriff after he allegedly learned of the
broadcasted reports of flying discs. However, following some initial
confusion at Roswell Army Air Field, the “flying disc” was soon
identified by Army Air Forces officials as a standard radar target.”
From 1947 until the late 1970s the Roswell Incident was
essentially a non-story. The reports that existed contain only descriptions
of mundane materials that originated from the Project MOGUL balloon
train- “tinfoil, paper, tape, rubber, and sticks.“’ The first claim of
“bodies” appeared in the late 197Os, with additional claims made during
the 1980s and 1990s. These claims were usually based on anecdotal
accounts of second-and third-hand witnesses collected by UFO
proponents as much as 40 years after the alleged incident. The same
5