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The Roswell Report: Case Closed

US Air Force · 1997 · 234 pages · text from the file's own layer

The Roswell Report: Case Closed is a 1997 US Air Force report written by Captain James McAndrew, with a foreword by Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall. It follows up the 1994 report, which found that the 1947 debris came from the balloon project MoGUL. It concludes that the reported alien bodies were probably anthropomorphic test dummies dropped from high altitude balloons. It attributes the hospital body claims to a 1956 KC-97 crash and a 1959 manned balloon mishap.

  • p. 116 …hospital, even though Project ExcELSIOR was unclassified, Kittinger sought to limit disclosure of negative information and…
The statements attributed to the redheaded captain, "You did not
see anything. There was no crash here. You don't go into town making
any rumors that you saw anything or that there was any crash," 200 were
consistent with Kittinger's desire to avoid an accident investigation.
However, when interviewed for this report, neither Kittinger nor any of
the other persons documented as having been present in the hospital that
day recalled encountering Dennis. 201
What may have led an uninformed person, such as Dennis, to
believe they were witnessing, or were told of, an unusual or classified
event, was that when the injured balloon pilots arrived at the Walker AFB
hospital, even though Project ExcELSIOR was unclassified, Kittinger
sought to limit disclosure of negative information and publicity. 202
By 1959, having been the subject of intense media scrutiny
following his June 1957 MAN HIGH I high altitude balloon flight, Kittinger
was aware of both the positive and negative aspects of publicity. In his
1961 book, The Long, Lonely Leap, Kittinger described this self-imposed
secrecy regarding Project ExcELSIOR, "The secrecy imposed upon
ExcELSIOR was of our own choosing. We believed ... that any unnecessary
conversation about our activities ... would simply be premature."203
When interviewed for this report, Kittinger further explained of Project
ExcELSIOR and the visit to the hospital at Walker AFB: "We didn't want
publicity... about anything we were doing. So it would have appeared to
someone not conversant with the project that we were 'hush-hush,' that
we were secretive ... it might look like we were trying to cover up a
classified mission."204
The allegations that the redheaded captain, an apparent
reference to Kittinger, threatened anyone while he was at the Walker
AFB hospital are untrue. When interviewed for this report and in signed
statements obtained from Kittinger, the two other balloon pilots, the
doctor who treated them, the medic aboard the helicopter, and the Balloon
Branch communications technician who were present at the hospital that
day (see Appendix B), none of them recalled that Kittinger was involved
in an altercation or made threatening remarks to anyone. 205 Involvement
in an altercation with a civilian would have highlighted the presence of
the balloon crew and possibly brought the type of negative publicity
Kittinger sought to avoid. This would not only have violated Kittinger's
policy of maintaining a low profile in regard to ExcELSIOR, but would be
completely out of character for the seasoned test pilot.
Throughout his career, Kittinger was renowned for his ability
to maintain his composure in difficult, often life threatening, situations.
He faced these situations as a test pilot, as a combat pilot and squadron
commander in Southeast Asia, and as a Prisoner of War while subjected
to severe torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. In The Pre-
Astronauts, which chronicles many of Kittinger's accomplishments in
the field of aeronautics, including Project ExcELSIOR and STARGAZER, the
author offered the following description of him:
110

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About this file

Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 234 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.