Flying saucers in New Mexico? Governor rekindles Roswell

sfgate ^ | Monday, August 16, 2004 | Keay Davidson

[demlosers]

Ten years after the U.S. Air Force closed its books on the claim that a UFO crashed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947, a top Democratic Party figure wants to reopen the investigation into the cosmic legend.

Despite denials by federal officials, many UFO buffs cherish the notion that in early summer of 1947, a flying saucer crashed in rural Roswell, scattering alien bodies and saucer debris across the terrain.

Now Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who chaired the recent Democratic convention in Boston, says in his foreword to a new book that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never been adequately explained -- not by independent investigators, and not by the U.S. government. ... There are as many theories as there are official explanations.

"Clearly, it would help everyone if the U.S. government disclosed everything it knows," says Richardson, who served as Energy secretary under President Bill Clinton. "The American people can handle the truth -- no matter how bizarre or mundane. ... With full disclosure and our best scientific investigation, we should be able to find out what happened on that fateful day in July 1947."

[Claire Voyant]

Didn't Web Hubbell say that his job from Clinton was to find out who killed JFK and if Aliens did land at Roswell!! I SWEAR HE WAS SERIOUS!!!

[Tallguy]

Occams Razor.

The government has said the debris was part of a balloon that was being used to test detection technology. It was made of radar deflecting metal. That sounds more plausible than a flying saucer.

Either that or they were testing pilot escape systems for supersonic aircraft. I say this because:

1. Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947 in an experimental rocket plane (so no operational supersonic jets yet existed, but they were in development).

2. The reports mention "crash victims". Parachute dummy?

3. Air Force reports a downed high altitude balloon. Platform for testing the ejection/survival gear, since few high altitude aircraft would have been available, and in any case a balloon is cheaper.

4. The whole supersonic aircraft program, including Yeagers flight, was classified, and so the newly created USAF decides to admit to only bits 'n pieces and allow the public to fill-in the blanks.

BTW, if Bill Richardson wants to flack for the Roswell Chamber of Commerce, he should resign as governor and apply for the job.

[tiamat]

I see no reason why there could not be a Cathedral on Mars....

[Starstruck]

Sorry. I wandered in here by mistake.

[somemoreequalthanothers]

Again, why change a true story? I have never seen anything of this nature, but it is arrogant and foolish of mankind to think our technology is all that can possibly exist, IMO.

[drdemars]

Not to disclose my age but I delivered the newspaper on that morning in a small town South of Roswell with the headline reading UFOs crash in Roswell. I wasn't too excited then and not now.Yet, it has kept a declining town on the map. I left when the missile sights surrounding the town closed down. That and the air base closing. A great exodus.

[Solamente]

What I posted is the gospel on my sighting, and no more.

This is what I saw, my mother who is still alive will attest, and I don't care what anyone thinks; though I must say one thing to any sceptic: when it happens to you, who will belieive you?

[Rushmore Rocks]

I believe you.

1980, I was helping my son check his "trap line" in northeast Wyo.

We witnessed something very similar to what you saw.

I am not one given to hysterics, "tin foil", or paranoia.

But I saw what I saw.

It seems to me that it is the heighth of arrogance to believe that "we" are the only intelligent beings in the solar system.

There were also some "unexplained" cattle mutilations in our area around the same time frame.

That's another story.

[SERKIT]

Looks like JFK's being treated for terminal flatulence.

[COEXERJ145]

Running the state of New Mexico must be an easy job. Seems like Richardson has a lot of free time on his hands.

[BenLurkin]

I still have my Weekly World News copies of the Aliens meeting Ross Perot and the Aliens meeting CLintoon - preserved in plastic.

[Solamente]

So you know that I have minus zip to gain by standing tall on this one topic at least. I do apprecciate your support.

[ScottFromSpokane]

Firstly, I'm not talking about UFOs in general (which I find boring); I'm talking about Roswell in particular.

The Air Force didn't change their story. They amplified it. The balloon explanation made no effort to address the bodies, merely the debris (that is, the stuff that was really there). The "dummies" thing is in addition to the balloon thing. And as I say, it was silly. There's no need to "explain" the inventions of such as James Ragsdale and Glenn Dennis. There's not the slightest shred of evidence that their stories are true.

What we have with Roswell is the real story from 1947, which is high-reliability and low-strangeness, and the later stories from the 70s, which are high-strangeness and low-reliability. Saucer-peddlers like Stan Friedman and Kevin Randle grafted then together, hoping to get a high-strangeness, high-reliability event. It's a perfect example of why "UFOs" are not taken seriously, even when they might deserve to be.

[somemoreequalthanothers]

Dismiss it if you will. I think that adding to a story is the same as changing it.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

To any interested observer. Go visit the free museum in Roswell, NM. On its walls, are Photostat copies of notarized statements of what the local citizens saw that night. Read them and make up your own mind.

A statement from one of them sticks in my mind. On the second day the Army showed the person parts of a weather balloon that was supposed to have been the saucer. The person said that he had brains enough to know the difference between a space ship and a weather balloon. (This is severely paraphrased.)

On your next vacation detour out there and look around.

[Rushmore Rocks]

Until my and my son's experience......I, too, laughed and scoffed at all these reports.

I will never do so again.

I almost never mention this experience because of the reaction I get, even from dear friends.

A little personal background. I am 61 years old, college educated, and life-experienced. I am very pragmatic and a "doubting Thomas" about most things.

But, as I said before, I saw what I saw.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I lived at Roswell as a teen. I later was stationed at Walker AFB in 1966-67. The only time there was a mention of a so-called UFO sighting or anything like it was in 1967.

One Airman I worked with claimed to have seen a "glowing object" come in attached to the nose of a B-52 bomber. He claimed the APs' (APES,Air Police, before they became SPs, security police) swarmed the area of the flight line when the thing took off. They were then told "You men did not see what you just saw." I was at the barracks and didn't even hear of this till a year later.

The nearest claim to fame for Roswsell was in 1959, when two men who claimed to have shot a extremely large "dragon" type snake in the Ruidoso mountains but they later admitted it was just a python skin they had gotten in a trade. It made the front page of the Rosewell paper.

[MeekOneGOP]

hehe! just for grins ......

A claim of human cloning? It's been done before - Raelians '78 announcement was ruled a fraud
			Posted by MeeknMing On 01/01/2003 5:47 AM CST The Washington Post ^ | January 1, 2003 | The Washington Post Staff A claim of human cloning? It's been done before '78 announcement was ruled a fraud; new case awaiting validation 01/01/2003 The Washington Post For all the speed with which science was progressing, virtually no one thought it would happen so soon. Yet there it was in huge block letters on the front page of the New York Post: The world's first human clone had been born. The next day, The Washington Post and other newspapers across the country ran with the story about the rogue scientists who had cloned a human on an undisclosed island. A spokesman connected to...

[Ciexyz]

The Postal Service a few years back issued a special cachet with the Roswell postmark. The envelope was embossed with a drawing of a spaceship and a cute little green alien. I thought it was enchanting.

[Finny]

A couple of days ago I was in the grocery store and saw the latest issue of Weekly World News ... one of the headlines was about how Aliens had tried to hug John Kerry! (I'm still giggling about it ... I love Weekly World News! Now THAT'S a tabloid!)