The Roswell incident turned 65 this week. The above video is from 1989 and is excellent, but it is lengthy. So is Roswell for real or just another bunch of nut jobs with conspiracy theories?
The Huffington Post:
Happy anniversary, Roswell, N.M. It was 65 years ago today that the Roswell Daily Record blasted an infamous headline claiming local military officials had captured a flying saucer on a nearby ranch. And now, a former CIA agent says it really happened.
“It was not a damn weather balloon — it was what it was billed when people first reported it,” said Chase Brandon, a 35-year CIA veteran. “It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don’t doubt for a second that the use of the word ‘remains’ and ‘cadavers’ was exactly what people were talking about.”
Brandon served as an undercover, covert operations officer in the agency’s Clandestine Service for 25 years, where he was assigned missions in international terrorism, counterinsurgency, global narcotics trafficking and weapons smuggling. He spent his final 10 years of CIA service on the director’s staff as the agency’s first official liaison to the entertainment and publication industries. It was during this time, in the mid-1990s, that he walked into a special section of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., called the Historical Intelligence Collection.
“It was a vaulted area and not everybody could get in it,” Brandon told The Huffington Post. “One day, I was looking around in there and reading some of the titles that were mostly hand-scribbled summations of what was in the boxes. And there was one box that really caught my eye. It had one word on it: Roswell.
“I took the box down, lifted the lid up, rummaged around inside it, put the box back on the shelf and said, ‘My god, it really happened!'”
Brandon has never told another soul what was in the contents of that box.
“I’m not reluctant to talk about it — I won’t talk about it. I’m telling you there was a box that had stuff in there having to do with Roswell, and I looked through it, and it validated everything I believed in, and that’s all I have to say about it. I will go to my grave being mindful of the two hats that I wear: My personal one and the one that will forever reside on my head as a former CIA officer.”
None of this comes as a surprise to Stanton T. Friedman, a nuclear-physicist-turned-UFOlogist, who was the original civilian investigator of the Roswell UFO incident.
In the late 1970s, Friedman began to uncover former military eyewitnesses who had been involved with the original events that took place at Roswell in 1947.
Despite the fact that the military changed its story overnight, saying on July 8, 1947 that a flying disk had been captured but claiming on July 9 that a weather balloon had been recovered, Friedman’s early investigative efforts prompted many Roswell witnesses to come forward and tell their stories. Numerous researchers have dug up more facts in the years since.
“It’s been 65 years since things took place at Roswell,” Friedman told HuffPost. “How much more widely known could it be — everywhere I’ve spoken in the world, they ask about Roswell.”
“What we really need now is the Woodward-Bernstein of the UFO world to bring out the disclosure,” said Friedman. “Maybe Chase Brandon is a foresight of something going on.
“It’s time for the retirement of the mythical part — where we don’t have all the pieces — to be replaced by the true story of what happened, all the details, and we certainly don’t have them.”
I have talked to a couple of old timers from the military who have both said that there is no doubt in their mind that the Roswell incident really took place. Now that still doesn’t make it so. Roswell has lingered and there are people out there who have not changed their stories. Perhaps its time for the government to release the real story. I don’t believe in weather balloons.
President Jimmy Carter revealed that he saw a UFO above Leary, Ga., in 1969. He filed a report about the sighting to the International UFO Bureau in 1973.
So do you think it is true and why?
This is one of the most bogus stories I’ve ever heard. I’ve held high-level security clearances in past jobs and find the idea that they have a box of alien artifacts, records or whatever tucked away down in Langley laughable. I respect Mr. Brandon for his service to our nation, but he is looking for attention after retiring from an exciting career, stressed from the many years of the kind of service he did, or something.
While working among people with high-level security clearances, one of the tricks that was pulled on me, as I think it is on many entering such work, by people who have been around for a while is to make up stories about alien artifacts in the basement at Langley, the “truth” about Area 51, etc. and see if the new guy takes the bait. I’ve always been far too skeptical and didn’t bite. I did turn my head because of the experience and caliber of the people spinning these yarns but quickly found out it’s a prank often played on people entering work that requires high security clearances. “Hey, now that you’re here, do you want to know the truth about aliens, UFOs and the Kennedy assassination?”
The National Geographic Channel showed a program on Area 51 recently that discussed declassified information and interviewed people who had worked there many years ago. It was a very interesting, credible documentary. According to that show, Area 51 was and maybe still is a facility run by the military to develop and test cutting-edge aircraft technologies and other things. Most of the test flights are done at night, and crashes sometimes occur. People misconstrued these sightings (not surprising because of the appearance of the aircraft) as UFOs. They were unidentified, but were not from outer space, and were not flown by aliens.
Sorry, but I’m just too much of a skeptic to buy into aliens, UFOs, Sasquatch, vampires or Anthropomorphic Global Warming.
Calling bogus again…..
I don’t know. I am not going to set myself up higher than someone with advanced degrees in science nor someone who has been involved in some of the issues dealing with UFOs. Some of those people I have talked with have a pretty compelling story to tell so I will just keep an open mind.
I found it interesting that after 65 year, some of those original folks who are still alive haven’t changed their story one iota.
What we do know is that 65 years ago, in Roswell, NM, something happened that brought the military, space/weather folks, government etc all converging on a story there that obviously was more than a weather balloon. We may never know more than we know today. If there were 4 little green men, they have done a good job of covering it up. However, as Fox Mulder says, I want to Believe and …..Trust No On.
@Moon-howler
Moon, I mostly adhere to Trust No One, and Believe No One these days, until or unless they give me reason to do so. I’m very much a skeptic unless someone shows me hard evidence and facts to convince me of something. I had an opportunity to read classified files also and learned that much of what we’re told publicly “just ain’t so.” I am not referring to aliens, UFOs, etc. I don’t believe the weather balloon stories either, but consider them not covering up evidence of aliens, but evidence of highly-classified government programs. Letting people think it’s all about aliens and UFOs helps with protecting the classified nature of these programs by distracting people’s attention – watch that National Geographic show on Area 51 if you get a chance.
By the way, I support the cover-ups discussed in that show. Having that technology without the Soviets knowing about it contributed enormously to our efforts during the Cold War. If a true national security interest is at stake, such as learning what the Soviets were up to during the Cold War, I don’t object to the government lying to me. The problem these days, however, is that secrecy is being used to conceal corruption and abuse, rather than just national security interests.
Maybe I’m steering this thread toward a discussion of when government secrecy is acceptable and when it’s not. I consider that a much more important topic than whether or not aliens crash landed at Roswell (trust a skeptic on this one – they didn’t).
I didn’t mean to imploy that another life form would be just 200 years ahead of us…I was just saying how much life has change in just that amount of time. (saying 2000 years –wouldn’t have the same message since the most radical change has been recent.)
I don’t trust skeptics. Why should I? You don’t know any more about it than I do, really. I am keeping an open mind. I don’t believe it or disbelive it. I think it is possible, that’s all. Everything isn’t always along our time table or perception of reality.
As for the crash in NM, I guess that’s why there are called ‘accidents.’ Maybe it was shot down.
I agree about govt. secrecy. There was some thought that it was too sooon after WWII for people to go through something else. I don’t like govt secrets as a rule.
The Truth is Out There.
Mulder lives!
To see how ridiculous these alien stories are consider this. To believe, for example, the Roswell story, you must accept that some intelligent civilization lights years away has developed the technology for inter-stellar space travel. They’ve figured out how to get around the constraints of Einstein’s theory of relativity (space and time). They travel here however many light-years, only to crash their space ship in the dessert? What happened? All-nighter at the bars in Las Vegas disguised as humans and then flew a space ship under the influence?
Why would you take aliens and limit them to earth bound science? That is egocentric thinking or at least geocentric.
Mathematically speaking the probability of there being other intelligent beings out there is veryhigh. We are only limited by our own minds. Think how our civilization has changed just in 200 years. How about civilization that have existed far longer than ours has, from other galaxies?
I don’t believe the possibiliites are finite. I also have no theories…just an open mind. I do believe there is something out there making seemingly intelligent people believe they have witnessed some sort of close encounter.
Sorry, typo. Crash their space ship in the desert. I doubt anyone thinks aliens are flying into chocolate sundaes or apple pies.
@Moon-howler
I agree that there is a virtual certainty of life, likely intelligent, elsewhere in the universe. That’s not the issue.
However, you are helping prove my point about these alien stories. You are absolutely correct that if some alien civilization has perfected inter-stellar space travel it might very well be based on some science not only far more advanced than ours, but possibly very different. All the more reason to think that they wouldn’t travel all the way to earth just to crash in the desert.
Also, the science needed for inter-stellar space travel would be much farther ahead of us than just another 200 years. Take your point about what’s happened in the past 200 years, the accelerating pace of change, and try to imagine where we will be in just another 500 years. With that technology are we going to be crashing into the desert?
Given the age of the universe, it’s highly unlikely that another civilization would be within just a few hundred years of us technologically. More likely, they would be ahead of us by hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. If humanity survives that long, what do you think our technology would look like by then? Again, not likely that you would travel that far just to crash in the desert.
Just imagine showing an iPhone to Ben Franklin. Hey Ben, forget the kite, check THIS out! He would have sworn you were from another planet as well. What a difference a couple hundred years makes let alone several thousand. I’m open that anything is possible, however it also has to be provable. The thing that gets me is that even when a sighting lasts for more than ten minutes, and witnessed by hundreds, you still don’t get any photo or video evidence. I know for a fact that if something hovered over some building in the daylight today there would be hundreds of cell phone photos and videos as evidence. Until that evidence appears I’ll remain open minded, but very skeptical.
And on this subect, I agree with you, SA. I have one thing that pushes me a little more towards it and it is very personal for me. Before my mother died…like say 6 months before, she told me that my father had told her that he saw a UFO many years ago, when I was a little kid. Now my father was one of those people who would not have wanted to look or sound like a nut case. If I had a UFO land in the front yard and had conversed with its inhabitants, I probably would not have told him for fear of being scoffed at.
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when she told me. I asked her why he had never told me. (He died in 1997) She said she guessed he didn’t want to scare me. I said well he had a lot of years to fill in when I wouldnt have been scared and she didn’t know.
Maybe he thought he saw something. Who knows.
Then there were the ufos over the capital.
There are lots of other sources, not just wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington_D.C._UFO_incident
65 years later, we really don’t know a whole lot more. The Scopes Monkey Trial-87 years ago. The same fight is raging in some localities. Certainly, even with all the DNA testing, or origins of man haven’t completely settled out of political discord. Until that happens, can we really say it is settled science. New discoveries are being made daily.
SA, I like your iphone and Ben Franklin reference though. Put the kite cord away, Ben. Check out this new iphone. He would have thought you were nuts. Yo are 100% right.
@Need to Know
@NTK
That’s why they call them accidents. How can a transport helicopter with all the latest technology be brought down in the mountains of Afghanistan in a sand storm? Was it sand or was it enemy fire?
Being light years ahead in technology doesn’t mean the more advanced civilization knows EVERYthing.