Roswell Incident Had Victims, Program Says

AP | 11/22/02

[Davea]

Roswell Incident Had Victims, Program Says

By RICHARD BENKE | The Associated Press 11/22/2002

ALBUQUERQUE - While he told the world that a weather balloon went down in Roswell, an Army general had in his hand a memo telling Pentagon brass of a UFO crash with "victims," according to a new television documentary.

A computer analysis of that memo, held by Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey during a July 1947 press briefing, is the "smoking gun" of the Roswell Incident, researchers say in the documentary being broadcast today on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Using a digital photo scanner to enlarge and enhance words printed on the folded piece of paper Ramey held, and using another computer program to select the most likely words, researcher David Rudiak, who has a Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley, found two key phrases: "the victims of the wreck" and "in the 'disc' they will ship."

With the textual study plus University of New Mexico archaeological findings from one of three alleged UFO crash sites, science fiction seeks to close the gap with fact, producers say.

A photograph taken July 8, 1947, in Fort Worth, Texas, by James Bond Johnson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram shows Ramey clutching a communique to Washington, D.C., while he displays a deflated weather balloon just hours after other Army officers in Roswell had reported a UFO crash.

It was one of a series of inconsistent military reports about the incident, which has become part of American mythology.

"Unless national security is at stake, there is absolutely no reason to keep this information from the public," said Thomas Vitale, a Sci-Fi Channel vice president. "Whatever crashed at Roswell, let us know what the truth is."

The Air Force had responded to a 1994 call from the late U.S. Rep. Steve Schiff, R-N.M., by saying it had no information on the Roswell Incident. Schiff, an Air Force reserve judge advocate general's officer, then took his query to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In 1997, the Air Force acknowledged the weather balloon had been a false cover story, but a new story also was called into question. In a report written by Lt. William McAndrew, the Air Force suggested reports of alien bodies in the wreckage must have originated because of a crash-test program in which mannequins were dropped from balloons. The mannequins did not come close to matching 1947 descriptions of alien bodies, and the crash-test program was not introduced until 1953, Rudiak said.

Sci-Fi, guided by longtime Roswell UFO researchers Tom Carey and Don Schmitt, commissioned William Doleman, an archaeologist with UNM's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, to excavate the alleged initial crash contact point on the ranch where the late Mack Brazel worked as foreman.

Doleman said he knows little about the Roswell Incident but agreed to excavate the site using purely scientific methods because it is "culturally significant" and because so much of what is circulated about the Roswell crash landing is based on hearsay. What was needed, Doleman said, was physical evidence.

"So this project is a very bold step by people who claim to know what happened and where it happened," Doleman said. "What makes it bold is they were willing to go out there and look for physical evidence."

Details of the excavation are being kept confidential until after today's premiere. But Doleman said he agrees "that obviously something happened in July 1947 in southeastern New Mexico." After his work there, though, he said, "I'm still uncertain" about UFOs and alien beings.

The documentary will introduce some witnesses who have not been heard from publicly before, attesting to the existence of alien bodies in the wreckage of the "flying disc," Carey said by phone from his home in Pennsylvania.

"This is where we loaded the bodies," he quotes one New Mexico witness, Robert Slusher, as saying. Slusher, among those appearing in the documentary, was part of a B-29 crew that he said loaded bodies up through the plane's bomb bay at the Roswell Army Airfield.

Three victims were supposedly recovered from the final crash site, and a team of archaeologists, coincidentally, were in the area doing research on ancient Indians at the time, Carey said. Among them was Curry Holden, an archaeologist from Texas Tech in Lubbock, whom Carey located in 1992.

"Curry Holden said he saw everything - the craft and the bodies," Carey said. Holden died a few months later.

Carey, an investigator for a private corporation, said he started looking into Roswell 12 years ago "as a hobby."

But it became more than that. And now, he said, he and Schmitt are in a race against time, as witnesses become scarcer.

©Santa Fe New Mexican 2002

[Senator Pardek]

Just because I do not know what it was does not make "space aliens" a viable theory...

[Senator Pardek]

I insist on being on being pinged when badmouthed - and no, I don't fear space aliens anymore than I fear fairies or gremlins.

[Quix]

I don't think either one of you have a clue about the fellow I see in my mirror.

I just watched the Roswell program again.

It seems to me, either you didn't watch the program or you're stubbornness exceeds your sanity or exceeds your intellectual horsepower or exceeds your wisdom.

You also seem to have little clue about how I construe data in this whole broad subject area.

Fascinating psychological/sociological experience relating to you.

[Quix]

"Hopelessly blurred enlargements"

doesn't seem to match the reality presented even in the program.

Interesting mangling of the data.

[Quix]

They showed parts of it. I'd have been happier if they'd shown all of it. But it was still more than a little convincing.

I didn't call it 100% proof. I called it convincing.

[Quix]

I Love it.

You seem to have quite a strong polarity response. A

binary reality must be about the limits of your system.

[Quix]

Quite plausible to me!

[Quix]

BTW, I have a life history of construing different aspects, objects, dynamics, relationships etc. quite differently from my peers--often to some significant incredulity and even ridicule--until years hence when the data has ended up confirming my very early constructions on the reality in question.

So, I have a LOT of experience knowing things others around me seemed to not know and think far fetched--only to be confirmed years later. It's not always been fun. But it's been interesting.

I don't consider this any big deal and certainly no feather in my cap. I didn't have anything to do that I know of with my own creation and too little with my own training. But I have tried to pay attention.

[Quix]

Not given all the other confirming data available.

Argue with what must be over 1,000 witnesses of tangible things related to government contact etc. if you wish.

They and I will merely consider you silly or fearful of the truth or some such.

[Quix]

Consider the testimony of Captain Bill Uhouse which I hope to type in later.

Re the testing etc. of such.

[Quix]

Just because I do not know what it was does not make "space aliens" a viable theory...

Just because you refuse to accept the reports of a LOT of people who did know what it was doesn't make "space aliens" an invalid theory.

[Quix]

Perhaps you fear having your cosmology jangled severly.

[MHGinTN]

Let's discuss the program and the assertion therein, and stop the personalized retorts, okay?

[dinodino]

Did YOU watch the show? They showed perhaps a dozen total words, with closeups of the V - - - - - S word. Only a handful of words were unambiguously interpreted. Very blurry. As I said earlier, copies of the negatives are available to you for you to try your own analysis.

[Quix]

That's probably wise but it takes a certain amount of perverse fun out of it. . . . partially sorry.

[Quix]

Not sure when I might get around to trying to buy such a CD. Not soon.

But you honestly didn't find the presentation of those words plausible?

What could be simpler than getting the list of possible words with the letters clear and trying to see which one(s) matched most. It was exceedingly straight forward and clear, to me.

[dinodino]

The problem, Quix, is that more than one group has attempted this, and they've come up with different transcriptions. Why do you think this might be?

[MHGinTN]

Nailing down the word 'victims' doesn't automatically transfer to 'alien victims'. As I recall, victims was the only word so deliniated for all english words similar. were there others in the show?

[Senator Pardek]

Do you really believe Ramey would take a top secret document whose contents he was trying to discredit to the press conference? Lol...

[MHGinTN]

It would not be outlandish for a man to try and have ammo to cover his butt in case the real truth outed unexpectedly. But, what is the 'real truth'? I guess that's what were trying to discuss.