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

service. Most, however, related their stories in their older years, well after the fact. In other cases, the information provided is second or thirdhand, having been passed through a friend or relative after the principal had died. What is uniquely lacking in the entire exploration and exploitation of the "Roswell Incident" is official positive documentary or physical evidence of any kind that supports the claims of those who allege that something unusual happened. Conversely, there has never been any previous documentary evidence produced by those who would debunk the incident to show that something did not happen; although logic dictates that bureaucracies do not spend time documenting nonevents.

## SEARCH STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY

To insure senior Air Force leadership that there were no hidden or overlooked files that might relate to the "Roswell Incident," and to provide the GAO with the best and most complete information available, SAF/AAZ constructed a strategy based on direct tasking from the Office of the Secretary, to elicit information from those functional offices and organizations where such information might logically be contained. This included directing searches at current offices where special or unusual projects might be carried out, as well as historical organizations, archives, and records centers over which the Air Force exerted some degree of control. Researchers did not, however, go to the US Army to review historical records in areas such as missile launches from White Sands, or to the Department of Energy to determine if its forerunner, the Atomic Energy Commission, had any records of nuclear-related incidents that might have occurred at or near Roswell in 1947. To do so would have encroached on GAO's charter in this matter. What Air Force researchers did do, however, was to search for records still under Air Force control pertaining to these subject areas.

In order to determine parameters for the most productive search of records, a review was first conducted of the major works regarding the "Roswell Incident" available in the popular literature. These works included: The Roswell Incident (1980) by William Moore and Charles Berlitz; "Crashed Saucers: Evidence in Search of Proof" (1985) by Moore; The UFO Crash at Roswell (1991) by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt; The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell (1994), also by Randle and Schmitt; The Roswell Report: A Historical Perspective (1991), George M. Eberhart, editor; "The Roswell Events" (1993) compiled by Fred Whiting; Crash at Corona (1992) by Stanton T. Friedman and Don Berliner; and numerous other articles written by a combination of the above and other researchers. Collectively, the above represent the "pro" UFO writers who allege that the government is engaged in a conspiracy. There are no specific books written entirely on the theme that nothing happened at Roswell. However, Curtis Peebles in Watch the Skies! (1994) discussed the development of the UFO story and growth of subsequent claims as a phenomenon. There has also been serious research as well as a number of detailed articles written by so-called "debunkers" of Roswell and other incidents, most notably Philip J. Klass, who writes The Skeptic's UFO Newsletter, and Robert Todd, a private researcher. The concerns and claims of all the above authors and others were considered in conducting the USAF records search.