The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup [Hardcover]

Philip J. Klass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

For years, the public has been led to believe that the US government and the military have tried to cover up the recovery of a crashed saucer and its alien occupants from near Roswell, New Mexico. This belief has been fostered by numerous books, newspaper articles, TV shows, and movies released since the incident of 1947. After many years of investigation, Philip J. Klass (the Sherlock Holmes of UFOlogy), has uncovered hard evidence that there is indeed a cover-up, 'but not by the US government'. This is based on solid evidence contained in once 'secret' and 'top secret' Air Force and CIA documents whose contents were intentionally withheld by authors of books and articles on Roswell, as well as by those who produced TV shows on the subject. Here, Klass discloses what really crashed on the Brazel ranch. He also reveals serious flaws in the tales told by alleged witnesses, some of whom have drastically changed their accounts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573921645
• ISBN-13: 978-1573921640
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,483,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An admirable exercise in rationality, with minor flaws, February 12, 1999

By 

Michael Bulger (Rochester, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup (Hardcover)

Imagine you are a government official, investigating the possibility of a cover-up of knowledge of an alien spacecraft that crashed at Roswell over 50 years ago. Imagine that you find nothing; furthermore, imagine that you have nothing to find. Your situation is hopeless--who in the UFO-believer community is ever going to believe you, no matter what you can show? Philip Klass is either to be admired or pitied for taking on this Sisyphean task; no matter how convincingly he demonstrates that the supposed "crash" at Roswell has a prosaic explanation, no matter how ridiculous the so-called "researchers" who claim otherwise are revealed to be (ranging from simple gullibility to outright fraud), the counter-arguments will _never_ stop. There will always be some new account, some new dimension to the conspiracy, that the diligent debunker failed to address. This principle is exemplified by Kevin Randle's review of this book right here on this URL (see below). Don't let Mr. Randle fool you--this book strikes a fatal blow to the entire Roswell crashed-saucer phenomenon. Mr. Klass has a tendency to harp on certain facts a little too much (the single document that he believes serves to falsify all notions of recovered alien spacecraft does nothing of the sort; it is simply a piece of evidence to that effect), but the story of Project Mogul--a simple, relatively boring high-altitude balloon experiment--is compelling, and explains just about everything. The book is pleasantly short, and makes for a breezy read, which is surprising for a debunking effort. The truth is out there, and Philip Klass reveals it. (P.S. to Mr. Randle: if one is to dismiss the Project Mogul explanation because part of it depends upon the 50-year old recollections of one man, then one must naturally also dismiss the entire crashed-saucer story, which depends entirely on such crusty old memories, most of which conflict with each other.)

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phillip Klass hits a home run on the Roswell UFO myth., August 23, 1998

By 

Stanley A. Nelson (Roswell, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup (Hardcover)

As a Roswell resident for 30 years, I'm always looking for definitive and well researched books on the subject of the Roswell 'UFO' crash. I found it in Phillip Klass's book which is full of facts and details that ought to make believers run and hide. I suggest it be on every skeptic's book shelf.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unrigorous assessment of the evidence, August 15, 2010

By 

M. Rowen "MJR" (DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup (Hardcover)

It's easy to prove any hypothesis if you only screen for evidence that supports your hypothesis. But this is not how one follows the scientific method. Klass fails in this book because he did not evaluate all of the evidence available to him, just the evidence that supported his thesis and a few bits of info that was shown to be bogus by others. He ignored the plethora of eyewitness testimony as detailed in the very compelling book "Witness to Roswell". He ignores the documents released by the US government under the Freedom of Information Act, which while they do not mention Roswell by name, they do contain several mentions of "flying disks" in the months and years immediately post-Roswell.

At least the author admits to a coverup. An example of his lack of rigor is that he questions how an advanced aircraft could crash on its own anyway, suggesting this as evidence of a bogus story. He fails to mention the thunderstorms over Roswell the night of the alleged crash, and that several eyewitnesses claimed to have seen something get struck by lightning in the sky and explode. While I would find it hard to accept that our military could shoot down a true alien spacecraft (their tech would be too far advanced for that to occur), or that an equipment failure on board would cause a crash, a lightning strike knocking out a UFO is something that I can wrap my head around as plausible.

Besides "Witness to Roswell", Philip Corso's book "The Day After Roswell" provides a pretty intriguing story of how the military recovered technology from the craft, and gave small samples to its defense contractors claiming they were recovered from a downed Russian jet, and asked the contractor to reverse engineer the material for use in the US defense program. These contractors proceeded to develope lasers, fiber optics, kevlar, microwaves, high strength titanium alloys, and semi-conductors via reverse engineering the materials. The book points out that the contractors were all allowed to file patents on their insights that they would be allowed to exploit commercially in parallel to the defense purposes they were being paid to develop. Corso points out that the first publications anywhere on these subjects, and the first patent filing for all of these technologies, were all in the first two years post-Roswell. He also provides a compelling story of why and how the military chose to cover up Roswell. Forgot to mention, Corso was a retired Army Colonel who was in charge of Foreign Technology R&D, precisely the group that reverse engineers and assimilates technology from capture enemy craft and weapons. Corso released this book in his 90's as he was nearing the end of the days by the way.

For any of you skeptics that consider yourselves open-minded and logically disciplined (like I do), I suggest you read one or both of these books I mentioned as they are not of the tin foil hat conspiracy monger variety, but are pragmatic fact based articulations of what has been uncovered by each author. These two books flipped me from a 5% to 95% belief that Roswell involved a UFO crash.