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MSNBC on Release of USAF Roswell Report

Can be found on: http://www.msnbc.com/news/82002.asp
The Real Audio links are in brackets.

Air Force takes another look at Roswell

Reports of aliens traced to dummy tests, air accidents


In a new report, the U.S. Air Force says experiments involving
human-size dummies and accidents involving military personnel during
the 1950s probably helped inspire long-lived reports that a flying
saucer crashed in New Mexico in 1947.

"The Roswell Report: Case Closed" follows a 1995 Air Force study saying
that debris recovered 50 years ago near Roswell, N.M., was connected
with Project Mogul, a top-secret operation to use weather balloons and
radar equipment to monitor Soviet nuclear blasts.

When the wreckage was first found, the Army Air Force briefly reported
that a "flying disk" had been retrieved - but the report was withdrawn
within hours.

Questions about the Roswell incident resurfaced in the 1980s, when UFO
researchers seized on eyewitness reports about the purported recovery
of alien bodies and wreckage.

The Air Force stuck by its Project Mogul explanation for the wreckage
near Roswell. But it noted that "lingering questions" remained about
the reports of bodies.

Based on a review of its records and interviews with witnesses, the Air
Force says "activities which occurred over a period of many years have
been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or
three days in July 1947." Among the reportís conclusions:

*The alien bodies observed in the New Mexico desert "were probably
anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force
high-altitude balloons for scientific research." The dummies were
dropped from the balloons and examined for the effect of the impact.

*Reports of unusual military activity in the desert match up with the
Air Forceís procedure for retrieving debris from the dummy tests.

*Claims that bodies were taken to the Roswell Army Air Field probably
refer to a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members
were killed, and a 1959 manned-balloon mishap in which two Air Force
pilots were injured.

The report was written by Air Force Capt. James McAndrew, who also
wrote the 1995 Roswell report. A copy of the new study was obtained by
NBC News in advance of its scheduled release Tuesday.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of
the first flying-saucer sighting, reported by Boise, Idaho, businessman
Kenneth Arnold as he flew over Washington stateís Cascade Mountains.

Advance word of the new report has been circulating for more than a
week, and some UFO investigators have harshly criticized the Air
Forceís contention that Roswell witnesses confused events that occurred
more than a decade apart.

("Itís an absolute insult to the intelligence of the American people,î
said Dennis Balthaser, operations manager for the International UFO
Museum and Research Center in Roswell.")

Investigator Karl Pflock, who has concluded that the Roswell saucer
tale doesnít hold up, said the Air Force rushed its report into
publication to counter the 50th-anniversary hoopla over UFOs.

("People who want to believe in Roswell, as well as the people like
myself who are convinced that Roswell was something mundane ... will
find it laughable,") Pflock said.

Jerry Clark of the Center for UFO Studies wondered why the Air Force
felt the need to come out with an explanation for "alien bodies" at
all, particularly since the explanation was "not terribly persuasive."

"Because the evidence for alien bodies is intriguing but evidentially
thin, I think itís odd that the Air Force felt it had to explain these
reports," he said. "It just seems an exercise that undercuts itself.
... When you do this, youíre going one step toward explaining that
something extraordinary may have happened."


© 1997 MSNBC


Ufomind Index: Air Force Dummy Explanation for Roswell Bodies