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

USAF / The Black Vault · 1995 · 882 pages · text by OCR

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published by Headquarters United States Air Force in 1995. The Black Vault distributes this copy. It reproduces the report by Col. Richard L. Weaver and the synopsis by 1st Lt. James McAndrew, both written after a General Accounting Office inquiry requested by Representative Steven Schiff. The Air Force search found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concluded that the Roswell debris most likely came from NYU Flight No. 4, a Project MOGUL balloon train.

  • p. 15 …Gen Roger M. Ramey Col William H. Blanchard Maj Gen Clements McMullen Brig Gen Donald N…
  • p. 33 …Additionally, this history showed that the 509th Commander, Colonel Blanchard, went on leave on July 8…
  • p. 34 the supposed first ever recovery of extraterrestrial materials. (Detractors claim Blanchard did this as a ploy…
  • p. 43 …Additionally, it seems that there was overreaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel in originally reporting…
  • p. 65 …William Blanchard, the Public Information Officer, Walter G. Haut, issued a news release that the Amry…
  • p. 87 …on 8 July 1947. Colonel W. H. Blanchard, Commanding Officer went on leave. Lt Colonel Charles…
  • p. 88 …Colonel Oliver LaFarge, Air Reserve Corps, at Santa Fe, made arrangements for Colonel Blanchard to visit…
  • p. 89 …Colonel Blanchard spoke on the future of the Air Force, and the talk was very well…
  • p. 135 …Colonel Blanchard. RW: Oh yeah. Excuse me, Colonel Blanchard. SC: He was the Wing Commander of…
  • p. 138 …The first picture is actually with Jesse Marcel and that's General Blanchard and... SC: I…
  • p. 143 …Colonel William Blanchard and the other officer suggested that Marcel and CIC agent accompanied Brazel to…
  • p. 145 …O.K. "Blanchard, who was still at the base...ordered Marcel to accompany the rancher back…
  • p. 147 …Albuquerque rather than Fort Worth and although Blanchard outranked the CIC agent (meaning yourself) a phone…
  • p. 154 …time and we don't know if Blanchard knew about that or not: (we don't…
  • p. 155 …crash at the request of Marcel; maybe Blanchard, and I probably took Rickett with me. We…
  • p. 160 …The things that Ramey and Blanchard used to! Blanchard came over to the Philippines. I think…
  • p. 219 …What about then Colonel Blanchard and General Ramey? Do you think they may have had any…
  • p. 855 ## CHAPTER XIII # VISITORS and EXECUTIVE CALENDAR 3 September 1947 - Colonel Blanchard and Lt. Haut went to…
  • p. 864 …Roger M. Ramey and Col. William H. Blanchard. Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey was the Commanding…
  • p. 865 …As commander of Roswell Army Airfield and the 509th Bomb Group, Blanchard is alleged to have…
A: There's a gray area here. I was certainly aware that what we were doing in Alamagordo was highly classified and was well aware, and I guess had been perhaps encouraged to have a suitable cover story to explain what we were doing.

Q: So you were encouraged by whom to have a cover story?

A: Probably by James Peoples, who was our scientific monitoring... As you may be aware, there is a former colonel, later General DuBose, who makes a statement that something was a cover story. When I read this, I was not at all surprised. I interpreted that as saying someone was covering up on Mogul. That was my interpretation when I read what was attributable to General DuBose. So from his point of view, there were certainly no threats, but we were aware we weren't supposed to be talking.

Q: So was it Dr. Peoples then who actually actively said use meteorology as a cover story, or...

A: I don't remember the details, to be truthful...

Q: But it was kind of a natural thing to think of in terms of meteorology?

A: We were careful around NYU with the various technicians we hired. We kept our knowledge of what we were doing to ourselves. It's certainly my memory that we were aware that this was classified, but we weren't threatened. We were just instructed that this sort of information was not to be passed out, even though the technical aspects we understood. So the answer is yes, we very well understood this was classified; and second, there was no physical threat or anything like that. We were instructed not to talk about it, and until Todd told me that Mogul had been declassified I was very reluctant to say anything about it.

Q: Anywhere in the early days were you ever aware of involvement by General LeMay?

A: Not at all.

Q: Not at your level. How about the [AFOAT-1] study group?

A: I became involved with them later on Project Grab Bag and others, and I knew a bunch of people in [AFOAT-1] -- Doyle Northrop... I knew that, but later ballooning got even more heavily involved in various classified things.

Q: Where were your duty locations involved with [AFOAT-1]?

A: Probably at General Mills.

Q: Not ever in Washington?

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Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 882 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.