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

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

Q: We have tried to reach Colonel Trakowski, and he has not returned our calls. We've left messages on his answering machine, and there's been no response.

A: He may be out of town. I did visit him last October, and he made the point that... He was our project officer. He and I served together under Colonel Duffy in the Air Force Liaison Office in 1943 to... Well, I went overseas in '44 but Trakowski stayed and took a commission in the Air Force when it was offered and was the project officer on Mogul. I have some paperwork here from General LeMay's files in which after the war a number of people were to be sent overseas because they had not had overseas duty. There is a history of Colonel Trakowski. Perhaps you have it from the Pentagon files already, from the AG files.

## Q: We have some records, yes.

A: Anyway, Albert Trakowski was the Watson Laboratory project officer on this. When I raised this question to him he said he had talked to John Peterson, one of Colonel Duffy's procurement men, and they were joking about these markings on the tape. I have a letter that I can give you a copy of in which I quote Trakowski in saying, "What do you expect when you have your targets made by a toy factory in Manhattan?"

Q: So essentially, the original targets were made by a toy company?

A: Well, it's either a toy company or a garment manufacturer in the garment district in Manhattan, or it was by a novelty company. I talked to Ed Istvan who was another one of the Air Force liaison office people who stayed in. Istvan lives in your area. I can give you documentation on these things. Istvan says that it was some outfit that extruded toothpaste tubes and he got involved with them because they made radar chaff. In the early days of this effort, there were a number of different targets made. I don't have them here, I have them downstairs, there were a number of different forms the targets were made. One idea was just the inside of a meteorological balloon, to put radar chaff and adhere it with glycerine. Just wet the inside of the balloon with glycerine and then shake in dipoles cut to the proper half wave length. When the balloons were inflated, these would be all on the inside, coating the inside of the balloon. This didn't give nearly the sort of target that the corner reflector gave.

But anyway, Istvan initially went to New York hunting for a source of supply and came across a company.

(Pause)