The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert

# STATEMENT OF WITNESS

Date: 29 Jun 94

Place:

VA

I, Albert C. Trakowski, hereby state that Jeffrey Butler, was identified as a Colonel, USAF and Jim McAndrew, was identified as a Lieutenant, USAF on this date at my home and do hereby voluntarily and of my own free will, make the following statement. This is done without having been subjected to any coercion, unlawful influence or unlawful inducement.

I was provided a background on the Air Force efforts related to the GAO audit and it's association with the "Roswell Incident" and project Mogul. I personally know all the persons that Col Butler identified to me as having been contacted in this effort (Spilhaus, Moore, Istvan, Fletcher, Ms Duffy). I have also been contacted by several researchers and writers and discussed project Mogul and provided some documents to some of them. Robert Todd, I'm not sure whether he was a believer or not. Charles Ziegler was working on the history of nuclear weapons detection capability. He had some letters/papers that I did not have such as the letters the Gen Spaatz directed the establishment of project Mogul. Carl Pflock apparently wanted to establish the "incident" of Roswell as a UFO incident. Charlie Moore was primarily responsible for development of the constant level balloons for lifting the instrument packages. Concerning a cover story for the project Mogul, there was no planned cover story. I do not recall any documentation nor any efforts to develop a cover story even though the security for Mogul was of great concern. Charlie Moore and Athel Spilhaus used meteorological research as a cover but this was a spur of the moment effort--it was an obvious answer to a query--there was no documentation for using meteorology. We never considered a planned cover story; we were concerned with security.

I was the project officer succeeding Col Duffy in approximately November 1946. My primary purpose was nuclear weapons and guided missiles detection programs. Previously, I was appointed as the laboratory chief in the Signal Corps as an Air Force officer in charge of the Spherics program and later for the development of weather radar. Since my background was in physics, I took over project Mogul. It was the only Top Secret project at Watson Labs and I was the Top Secret Control Officer, so I knew the impacts with security associated with the project. We moved from Watson Labs to Cambridge Me which combined became the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, and I became the Director of the Air Force Geophysics Lab (and remained so until 1949). Through 1949, I was the director of both MX968 and Mogul. As the Mogul director, I went to Alamorgordo Army Air Field in early July 1947, to observe the New York University balloon group. The "Roswell Incident" occurred after we had returned to Red Bank (Watson lab) NJ. I became aware of this only after Col Duffy called me from Wright Field from his home. This was just an informational call, he just wanted to let me know that someone had come to him with some debris from New Mexico and he said, "this sure looked like some of the stuff that you launched from Alamorgordo." Duffy was very familiar with the various