In the summer of 1947, there were a number of UFO sightings in the United States.

Sometime during the first week of July 1947, something crashed near Roswell.

W.W. "Mac" Brazel, a New Mexico rancher, saddled up his horse and rode out with the son of neighbors Floyd and Loretta Proctor, to check on the sheep after a fierce thunderstorm the night before. As they rode along, Brazel began to notice unusual pieces of what seemed to be metal debris, scattered over a large area. Upon further inspection, Brazel saw that a shallow trench, several hundred feet long, had been gouged into the land.

Brazel was struck by the unusual properties of the debris, and after dragging a large piece of it to a shed, he took some of it over to show ,the Proctors. Mrs. Proctor has recently ( as of June 1997) moved from the ranch into a home nearer to town, but she remembers Mac showing up with strange material.

The Proctors told Brazel that he might be holding wreckage from a UFO or a government project, and that he should report the incident to the sheriff. A day or two later, Mac drove into Roswell where he reported the incident to Sheriff George Wilcox, who reported it to Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel of the 509 Bomb Group, and for days thereafter, the debris site was closed while the wreckage was cleared.

On July 8, 1947, a press release stating that the wreckage of a crashed disk had been recovered was issued by the Commander of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell, Col. William Blanchard.

Hours later the first press release was rescinded and the second press release stated that the 509th Bomb Group had mistakenly identified a weather balloon as wreckage of a flying saucer.

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Meanwhile, back in Roswell, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician working at the Ballard Funeral Home, received some curious calls one afternoon from the morgue at the air field. It seems the Mortuary Officer needed to get a hold of some small hermetically sealed coffins,and wanted information about how to preserve bodies that had been exposed to the elements for a few days, without contaminating the tissue.

Glenn Dennis drove out to the base hospital later that evening where he saw large pieces of wreckage with strange engravings on one of the pieces sticking out of the back of a military ambulance. Upon entering the hospital he started to visit with a nurse he knew, when suddenly he was threatened by military police and forced to leave.

The next day, Glenn Dennis met with the nurse. She told him about the bodies and drew pictures of them on a prescription pad. Within a few days she was transferred to England, her whereabouts still unknown.

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According to the research of Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle, in their book, A History of UFO Crashes, from which the following account of the Roswell Incident , in part, is based, the military had been watching an unidentified flying object on radar for four days in southern New Mexico. On the night of July 4, 1947, radar indicated that the object was down around thirty to forty miles northwest of Roswell.

Eye witness, William Woody, who lived east of Roswell, remembered being outside with his father the night of July 4, 1947, when he saw a brilliant object plunge to the ground. A couple of days later when Woody and his father tried to locate the area of the crash, they were stopped by military personnel, who had cordoned off the area.

Acting on the call from Sheriff Wilcox, Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel was sent by Col. William Blanchard, to investigate Mac Brazel's story.

Marcel and Senior Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agent, Captain Sheridan Cavitt, followed a rancher off-road to his place. They spent the night there and Marcel inspected a large piece of debris that Brazel had dragged from the pasture.

Monday morning, July 7, 1947, Major Jesse Marcel took his first step onto the debris field. Marcel would remark later that "something... must have exploded above the ground and fell." As Brazel, Cavitt and Marcel inspected the field, Marcel was able to "determine which direction it came from, and which direction it was heading. It was in the pattern... you could tell where it started out and where it ended by how it was thinned out..."

According to Marcel, the debris was "strewn over a wide area, I guess maybe three-quarters of a mile long and a few hundred feet wide." Scattered in the debris were small bits of metal that Marcel held a cigarette lighter to, to see if it would burn. "I lit the cigarette lighter to some of this stuff and it didn't burn", he said.

Along with the metal, Marcel described weightless I-beam-like structures that were 3/8" x 1/4", none of them very long, that would neither bend nor break. Some of these I-beams had indecipherable characters along the length, in two colors. Marcel also described metal debris the thickness of tin foil that was indestructible.

After gathering enough debris to fill his staff car, Maj. Marcel decided to stop by his home on the way back to the base so that he could show his family the unusual debris. He'd never seen anything quite like it. "I didn't know what we were picking up. I still don't know what it was...it could not have been part of an aircraft, not part of any kind of weather balloon or experimental balloon...I've seen rockets... sent up at the White Sands Testing Grounds. It definitely was not part of an aircraft or missile or rocket."

Under hypnosis conducted by Dr. John Watkins in May of 1990, Jesse Marcel Jr. remembered being awakened by his father that night and following him outside to help carry in a large box filled with debris. Once inside, they emptied the contents of the debris onto the kitchen floor.

Jesse Jr. described the lead foil and I-beams. Under hypnosis, he recalled the writing on the I-beams as "Purple. Strange. Never saw anything like it...Different geometric shapes, leaves and circles." Under questioning, Jesse Jr. said the symbols were shiny purple and they were small. There were many separate figures. This too, under hypnosis: [Marcel Sr. was saying it was a flying saucer] "I ask him what a flying saucer is. I don't know what a flying saucer is...It's a ship. [Dad's] excited!"

At 11:00 A.M Walter Haut, public relations officer, finished the press release he'd been ordered to write, and gave copies of the release to the two radio stations and both of the newspapers. By 2:26 P.M., the story was out on the AP Wire:

"The Army Air Forces here today announced a flying disk had been found"

As calls began to pour into the base from all over the world, Lt. Robert Shirkey watched as MP's carried loaded wreckage onto a C-54 from the First Transport Unit.

To get a better look, Shirkey stepped around Col. Blanchard, who was irritated with all of the calls coming into the base. Blanchard decided to travel out to the debris field and left instructions that he'd gone on leave.

On the morning of July 8, Marcel reported what he'd found to Col. Blanchard, showing him pieces of the wreckage, none of which looked like anything Blanchard had ever seen. Blanchard then sent Marcel to Carswell [Fort Worth Army Air Field] to see General Ramey, Commanding Officer of the Eighth Air Force.

Marcel stated years later to Walter Haut that he'd taken some of the debris into Ramey's office to show him what had been found. The material was displayed on Ramey's desk for the general when he returned.

Upon his return, General Ramey wanted to see the exact location of the debris field, so he and Marcel went to the map room down the hall - but when they returned, the wreckage that had been placed on the desk was gone and a weather balloon was spread out on the floor. Major Charles A. Cashon took the now-famous photo of Marcel with the weather balloon, in General Ramey's office.

As published in UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin D. Randle

and Donald R. Schmitt.

(Photo courtesy of Fort Worth Star - Telegram Photographic Collection, Special Collections division, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries)

>It was then reported that General Ramey recognized the remains as part of a weather balloon. Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, the chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force said, "[It] was a cover story. The whole balloon part of it. That was the part of the story we were told to give to the public and news and that was it."

The military tried to convince the news media from that day forward that the object found near Roswell was nothing more than a weather balloon.

July 9, as reports went out that the crashed object was actually a weather balloon, clean-up crews were busily clearing the debris. Bud Payne, a rancher at Corona, was trying to round up a stray when he was spotted by military and carried off the Foster ranch, and Jud Roberts along with Walt Whitmore were turned away as they approached the debris field.

As the wreckage was brought to the base, it was crated and stored in a hangar.

Back in town, Walt Witmore and Lyman Strickland saw their friend, Mac Brazel, who was being escorted to the Roswell Daily Record by three military officers. He ignored Witmore and Strickland, which was not at all like Mac, and once he got to the Roswell Daily Record offices, he changed his story. He now claimed to have found the debris on June 14. Brazel also mentioned that he'd found weather observation devices on two other occasions, but what he found this time was no weather balloon.

Later that afternoon, an officer from the base retrieved all of the copies of Haut's press release from the radio stations and newspaper offices.

The Las Vegas Review Journal, along with dozens of other newspapers, carried the AP story:

"Reports of flying saucers whizzing through the sky fell off sharply today as the army and the navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors."

The story also reported that AAF Headquarters in Washington had "delivered a blistering rebuke to officers at Roswell."

SIGHTINGS

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947:

"Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about
1,500 feet high and going fast. He estimated
between 400 and 500 miles per hour.

In appearance it looked oval in shape like two
inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like
two old type washbowls placed, together in the
same fashion. The entire body glowed as though
light were showing through from inside, though
not like it would inside, though not like it would
be if a light were merely underneath.

From where he stood Wilmot said that the object
looked to be about 5 feet in size, and making
allowance for the distance it was from town he
figured that it must have been 15 to 20 feet in
diameter, though this was just a guess.

Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs.
Wilmot said she heard a swishing sound for a
very short time.

The object came into view from the southeast and
disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity
of six mile hill.

Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and
reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself
hoping that someone else would come out and tell
about having seen one, but finally today decided that
he would go ahead and tell about it. The announce-
ment that the RAAF was in possession of one came
only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen."

ROSWELL REPORT 2

From the moment he arrived in Roswell, New Mexico last week, Colonel Philip Corso was in constant demand for press interviews. Despite his advanced age, Corso was energetic, lucid and very generous with his time. CNI News editor Michael Lindemann was fortunate to be invited to privately interview the Colonel in his hotel room on Saturday morning, July 5. Also present were the Colonel's son, Philip Jr., and William Birnes, co-author with Colonel Corso of the bombshell book, "The Day After Roswell."

In the book, Corso says that a genuine alien spacecraft, with bodies, was recovered near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. He says he personally viewed one of the dead alien bodies. More importantly, he says that during the early 1960s, he was stationed at the Pentagon under the command of General Arthur Trudeau, and was assigned the super-secret task of parceling pieces of alien spacecraft wreckage out to various defense-related companies who could back engineer the alien material into useful human technology. From this program, Corso says, sprang such strategically important developments as the integrated circuit for computers, fiber optics, advanced night vision technology and lasers.

Lindemann arrived at Corso's room as a previous interview was concluding. The Colonel and Mr. Birnes were explaining how Corso had arranged for the safe passage of 10,000 Jewish refugees out of Rome to Palestine just after the end of World War II. Lindemann picked up on this theme to start the CNI News interview.

ML = Michael Lindemann

PC = Phil Corso

BB = Bill Birnes

ML: Not only are you a highly decorated military officer, but it seems you've always been willing to be a bit of a maverick when it comes to "doing the right thing," even if it might make some other people uncomfortable -- to the point where this latest disclosure about Roswell seems essentially in character for you. But this is a bigger disclosure, a bigger departure from the norm than your previous actions, don't you think?

PC: Well, some other things have been pretty important. Like when I moved those 10,000 Jews, I thought nothing of it, but people said what a big thing it was. Putting Rome back on its feet was important. I don't think this is bigger than some of those things. Even the looks on the families' faces in front of Congress [when he testified about American POWs left in North Korea], that was pretty important to those people. And this one here, I think, fits in with all those others. Yes, it's important, because like they say, it might have changed the course of the world. Well, I have to give a lot of credit to General Trudeau, who made it possible, and to the other people who were with me. Maybe we changed the course of the world. The thing that I've done now is going to affect the future. That's why I bring the children in on it, the young ones. We're old now, we're going to be moving on. But they're going to be here. Let them know what happened. I think it's of great importance that those children are going to read this and know what happened and what it came from, and that it was true. It did happen. They have to know what's involved, and what it's leading to. They're the ones who will be involved in what it leads to. From that point of view, it's the most important thing I ever did.

ML: Where do you think it does lead to? You allude in your book to the possibility that maybe there's a hostile potential here.

PC: When you're in the military, you always have to figure on that hostile part. You can't disregard that. Our motto was, "Just in case, we're going to be ready." What's it going to be in the future? We called it at R&D [the Army's Research and Development Department at the Pentagon] the dawn of a new age, maybe a new world. The world's not going to stop. Maybe this was a seed that was sown to start a new world. Look what they did with the [computer] chip -- in just a few years, how it blossomed out into the supercomputer. I said to General Trudeau, "What are we unleashing on the world, General? If this can integrate with the brain, there's great danger." He said, "Yes, Phil, but the people coming after us, we hope, will possibly understand and take this into consideration. But maybe not in our lifetime." He didn't see it in his lifetime. He died three years ago.

ML: Do we know how to build the kind of craft that they found at Roswell?

PC: I think that we will know. Where we were missing out on a lot of this was in the propulsion and guidance systems. We came to the conclusion years ago, and now it's starting to take hold even among scientists, that the reason we missed out on this was that the extraterrestrial himself was the guidance system. He was part of the system. We never figured on that.

One day I was walking in the hall with General Trudeau, and I turned to him and said, "General, I think that son of mine is a little bit crazy. He says engines talk to him." The General turned to me and said, "Phil, don't ever say that again. People have certain relationships with engines, with solid matter, that we don't understand. But it's there." See, this is all starting to come forward now.

And it was uncanny that this book had to break when this thing is happening here at Roswell. I never expected what I saw last night, what I've seen here. [From the time he arrived in Roswell, Colonel Corso was surrounded by press and people seeking interviews.] Someone like me has always lived in the shadows. To all at once see this happening around me, and I'm a focal point -- I feel like I should be home sitting in my easy chair, not here. And yet, last night [at the Friday evening banquet] I was almost mobbed.

ML: Did you know that the American public was this hungry for this information, and this ready to believe you?

PC: Sure I knew. My nephew is a research director at [inaudible] university, and I have letters the young man wrote to me. He said, "Uncle Phil, please tell them to tell us the truth. We won't pull our hair out or panic. We want to hear this." In all of my interviews lately, I've been saying I'm going to prove this to you people. My own experience: I commanded a battalion of 1500 men. Average age, nineteen and a half years old. Those boys didn't panic and run. I told my exec[utive officer]: "My God, we're leading babies into combat." They didn't panic. They stood and fought some of the greatest armies the world has ever seen, and defeated them. A lot of them died. But they didn't run, they fought. So I say, this is the younger-age people -- they're not going to panic. Let them know. They want to know. That Orson Welles show [War of the Worlds, 1938] has thrown a lot of people off. It's not going to be like that.

ML: Do you feel we are ready to know the truth on this?

PC: We've been ready. A long time ago.

ML: Did you have to willfully break any personal oaths or promises to the military or the country in order to do what you've done?

PC: No. The oath that I held was with the General. I held that oath until he died, because he was an honorable man, an honest man. I liked him. He was a great man. As far as being an Army officer, I kept my oath for thirty-five years. I did not violate any security, and I had all the clearances. I was the one who used to stop people from violating security. I did not reveal anything that's harmful or should be kept quiet.

ML: There have been rumors and speculations that Roswell, and what came from Roswell -- the way we exploited Roswell technology -- might not have been the very first time such a thing happened. There have even been indications or speculations that the Nazis had done such a thing, that some of their extraordinary technological developments may have come from a similar source. What do you think about that?

PC: Yes. True. I had German scientists on my team. I discussed this with them. I discussed this with Oberth, von Braun. I was part of "Project Paperclip" with General Trudeau.

There's an example in the book. In the middle of the book there's a photograph of Edward O'Connor, one of Truman's poker- playing buddies at the White House -- he was a Soviet expert -- and General Trudeau, myself and Victor Fediay of the Library of Congress, who spoke fluent Russian. Fediay was going to Russia. I gave him a series of questions. I said, "Ask a KGB general these questions [pertaining to UFOs]." So Victor comes back and says, "Phil, I asked him the questions. You know what he said? He said, 'I know what you want. But do you want me killed?'"

Now, that's Russia. Germany? Yes. Canadians and British also, and something in Italy. There were crashes elsewhere, and they gathered material too. The Germans were working on it. They didn't solve the propulsion system. They did a lot of experiments on flying saucers. They had one that went up 12,000 feet. But where all, we and they, missed out was on the guidance system. In R&D we began to realize that this being was part of the guidance system, part of the apparatus himself -- or itself, because it had no sexual organs. This is where most people missed out.

ML: Do you think, then, that if we are going to develop a way of interstellar travel, we will have to develop a similar relationship to our spacecraft?

PC: Man can't travel in space today. Those clones were created to travel in space, specifically. They can travel in space. Our muscles, our bones, our brain, can't take space travel, even today. We can't do it.

ML: We can do it to some extent.

PC: Well, when they go to Mir, they stay up there two or three months, and when they come off, they have to be carried off. Their bones won't hold up. If they stayed a little longer, they'll never be able to walk. But the big thing that is not talked about is [that] the brain is affected up there.

ML: How is that?

PC: Gravity, radiation -- it comes right through that ship. Look at Senator [John] Glenn, he saw "fireflies" coming through his capsule. They weren't fireflies, they were some kind of electromagnetic thing that came through there. Those [alien] beings are created specifically to travel in space.

ML: Speaking of Senator Glenn, my understanding is that he's sort of ambivalent on the subject of UFOs. How would you characterize it?

PC: He told me exactly what he was. I met with Senator Glenn. I was supposed to meet him for half an hour, and he kept me for an hour and a half. During the course of the conversation, we talked about UFOs, and he said, "Colonel, I'm an agnostic." I said, "But you didn't say you don't believe," and he laughed. That's his exact word to me -- he's agnostic.

Then we got into Project Horizon. I had the whole project [document], 310 pages, and he wanted it. I had to give it to him. He was amazed when he saw that [in] 1959, long before he went up in the capsule, we had all the plans made up to put a military colony on the moon. Defense killed it on us. They didn't like the Army, so they took it away from us and killed it, and made NASA.

ML: Is it possible for any civilian to get their hands on the Project Horizon report today? How do we find out about this?

PC: It's unclassified. I was the declassifying officer. There's 50 pages of it in [my] book. I wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers historical division, and I told them where it was and what it was, and they found it and sent me copies of it immediately. The original was in color. Beautiful. I'd like to get my hands on it. [Corso pages through Appendix One of his book as he speaks.] Look, there's a lunar lander. This was 1959. The best brains in the world worked on this, all the Germans, all von Braun's team, they worked on this. I talked to a German in Huntsville, Alabama, a few months ago, and he said, "I remember that. I worked on it." This was an amazing document. And here's General Trudeau's instructions that started it. Lately, my scientist friend at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Texas had a meeting with the top [scientists] at NASA, and he threw Project Horizon on the table, and he says they were shocked. They couldn't believe it. They never knew about it. Defense killed it on us; and the CIA had a hand in killing it.

ML: Just the other day, the Air Force issued their latest official explanation of what happened at Roswell. I'm sure you must have had a few chuckles over it. How are you responding to this? And how is the press treating you, now that you've made your position so clear and now that the Air Force has said, again, that it's all a bunch of baloney?

PC: They're treating me better than I ever expected. I expected criticism. As far as the Air Force, I fought alongside them in Korea. I have a lot of friends in the Air Force, and I will not criticize a sister service. But I will criticize their superiors, the Secretary of the Air Force and so forth. It amazes me and I cannot comprehend why they do this. They don't have to do this. Why do they want themselves to look like fools? Even the young kids are telling me, "Dummies? Dummies?" and then they laugh. I can't comprehend why they put that out. What is in their mind? If I'd have written something like that, General Trudeau would have thrown me out of the top window of the Pentagon.

ML: What about the problem with Senator Strom Thurmond's foreword to your book? Simon and Schuster has issued a bland apology, saying they're going to pull Thurmond's foreword out of future printings of the book. What was your understanding with the Senator?

PC: I've known Strom Thurmond for almost a lifetime. He's a very honest, sincere and courageous individual. We've alway been close. I found out recently that his staff did it. I don't think the old man knew it, and I think the old man will eventually call me. We were too close for too many years. I sent the original foreword for the other book [Thurmond had written a foreword for a book titled "I Walked With Giants"] back to the Senator, and I told him, "If you want to send me another statement for this new book, that's fine. If you don't want to, that's fine too." I discussed UFOs with him. I gave him a copy of Project Horizon. About a week later, not only did I get the two pages that are in the book, but I also got a note from him authorizing Simon and Schuster to print it. Bill Birnes has all that. He has the original foreword -- the one I sent back -- and he has the new one.

ML: Bill Birnes told me when I arrived here today that he was under the impression that Thurmond or perhaps his staff had been pressured from higher up to back out of this. Can you say anything about this?

[Colonel Corso's son, present during the whole interview, made very visible hand signals to the Colonel at this point indicating that the Colonel should not answer this question.]

PC: I can't verify that one way or another.

ML: Forgive me, Colonel, if I ask Mr. Birnes to say something about this. [Birnes was in the room embroiled in a side conversation at this time.] Bill, the Colonel has just declined to address the question whether or not Senator Thurmond or his staff may have been pressured from higher up. You indicated that he might have been. Can you explain?

BB: This is just my understanding of it from stories I heard. The staff really wasn't aware of the agreement that Colonel Corso and the Senator had. It was an agreement between two friends, more than two business associates. The staff went ballistic when they found out. In other words, "How dare you do something and not consult your staff about what you're writing?" So the staff's immediate preliminary reaction was, "Oh no, this was the foreword for the book 'I Walked With Giants.'" What the staff didn't know was that Colonel Corso had sent that first foreword back to the Senator and got a new foreword in return. I have copies of both. So, obviously, they weren't in the loop. When they were told that this is a new foreword the Senator wrote, the story immediately changed. "Well, we weren't told, and we can't do this."

Finally, one of the staff members said, "Don't you understand that the Senator cannot be on a book cover, writing a foreword, for a book that says the United States government utilized alien technology to win the Cold War? Don't you realize this man is fourth in line to succeed the president? Don't you know this man is chairman of the Armed Services Committee? NO, it can't be." So they went to Simon and Schuster and said, "You have to pull the cover. Take it off the shelves, get the foreword out, write a new cover." Simon and Schuster said absolutely not. Then they made it very clear to Simon and Schuster, saying, "You're part of a large conglomerate. Your large conglomerate has to deal with government regulatory bodies. Do you really want to be in this position? Viacom goes before the FCC. You have a constituency of stockholders that you have to respond to.

ML: You're suggesting political blackmail.

BB: It's absolutely political blackmail.

ML: Can you verify that this is what was going on?

BB: I have to say that this is my understanding of what was going on because of confidential discussions I had with legal [personnel] at Simon and Schuster, and from statements that the staff members made to the Corso family with respect to the pressure that was being put on them to get this foreword out of the book. What I do know for a fact is that they demanded that Simon and Schuster pull the book off the shelves. Simon and Schuster flatly refused and said they had a signed release. Then [the Senator's staff] came back and said, "As a matter of courtesy, if we say that the Senator really wasn't clear on the nature of the book..." and Simon and Schuster said, "Well, if it's a matter of courtesy, then we can certainly understand that in the heat of material passing back and forth, misunderstandings can happen." So, that was the basic agreement.

ML: So, once they got the niceties of language straightened out, the agreement was that the foreword would be pulled from future printings of the book?

BB: Yes, exactly. But it will remain as it is, with this cover, for this printing.

ML: Cutting to other news, there was a story that broke here yesterday morning [Friday, July 4] about an object that had been tested by several scientists. Its content was almost entirely pure silicon, with small traces of metals such as germanium and zinc. This sounds suspiciously like some kind of solid state artifact, and it showed such highly anomalous isotopic ratios that a scientist was willing to say on the record that it had the appearance of extraterrestrial manufacture. Can this be compared with anything you saw at the Pentagon, Colonel?

PC: I don't know anything about it. It doesn't even sound similar to me.

ML: According to your book, you spent most of your time dealing with the artifacts and debris of the Roswell incident, but what about the aliens involved, and more especially, what about the alien situation today? What do you think is the nature of the alien presence, if any, on earth today?

PC: From my knowledge, at the moment, I don't know of any alien presence on earth. There are still reports of flying saucers, of course, but I don't know of any report of a body, or anyone who has seen [an alien] lately.

ML: What do you say about people such as abductees who claim to be actually seeing these creatures?

PC: My reports were thirty-five years ago. If there's anything now, I'm not aware of it. I know just what I saw in those days, and the truth like I lived it. If there's any aliens now, I'd like to see them. I don't know where they are. I'd like to see if they compare with the ones that I saw.

CREDIT FOR ROSWELL INCIDENT PART 1=IUFOMRC (International UFO Museam And Research Centre,ROSWELL NEW MEXICO)