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The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup

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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.)

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.

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.

People have been using Roswell incident as evidence of extraterestrial visitation. Klass like his other books, uses something most ufo believers like budd hopkins don't use, science and logic. Remember hearsay and conjecture are not evidence.

The assault on the theory that an alien spacecraft crashed outside of Roswell continues with the publication of Philip J. Klass' The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup. It is a short book of 29 chapters, large type and big margins that stretch it to 240 pages.

One of the problems is that key players are not mentioned. Major Edwin Easley, for example, isn't found in the pages, though Easley, as provost marshal at the base would have known about the crash, had it taken place. Easley told me that he had been sworn to secrecy about the events and mentioned "the creatures" to family members.

The book is filled with minor mistakes that bring into question the entire work. For example, Klass, when writing about the first Ragsdale affidavit, based on the January 29, 1993 interview, claimed that Don Schmitt had typed it. The fact is that Mark Chesney, a former NASA engineer, had suggested an affidavit. Chesney drafted it, and Max Littell typed it for signature.

Of course, these are all minor points but they do suggest the general sloppiness with which the book was thrown together. There are, however, much larger issues with this work. Clearly, the intent of some of it was to mislead the public into believing that those of us who suggest a saucer crashed have been less than candid. But it seems that Klass is the one who is less than candid.

There are documents, that Klass failes to mention, that support the idea that something unusual crashed outside of Roswell. Take, as an example, the July 10, 1947 "office memorandum" written by FBI agent E.G. Fitch and sent to D.M. Ladd about the flying discs. Brigadier General George Schulgen at the Pentagon had asked FBI Special Agent Reynolds for help investigating the flying disks. Clyde Tolson, one of the top FBI men, on July 15 endorsed the memo, saying, "I think we should do this."

It was then passed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who wrote, "I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to d! isks recovered. For instance, in the La case the Army grabbed it would not let us have it for cursory examination."

So Klass accuses me, and the others, of neglecting to mention those facts which don't support our point of view. He makes much of the fact that we are the ones engaging in a coverup with our lack of candor. But then how to explain Klass' failure to mention Hoover's handwritten note or Easley's suggestion of extremely high security.

Klass is not above misleading the readers when it suits his purpose. On page 119, arguing for the Project Mogul explanation, he wrote, "Further, that this train of balloons, radar targets, and instruments had been tracked by ground and later airborne radar to within 17 miles of the Brazel ranch before radar contact was lost."

That statement is based solely on the memory of Charles Moore, who didn't say that it had been tracked by radar, but that it was his memory that the flight had been lost near Arabela, which is twenty to thirty miles south of the Brazel ranch. There is no documentation to corroborate Klass' statement, and, in fact, the single bit of documentation that does exist, suggests there were no radar targets and no array train attached to the flight. These are facts that Klass fails to mention in his book.

The important statement that Klass made, that suggests documentation and radar confirmation of a Mogul flight near the Brazel ranch turns out to be erroneous, conjecture, and based on the nearly fifty year old memories of Charles Moore. Klass' book was a disappointment. I had expected better from him. It seemed, almost, that he didn't want to write them book. He went through the motions but didn't have his heart in it. His past investigations often turned up new information and his arguments made some sense. But here we have only conjecture heaped on speculation and underscored by invention. There is just too much wrong with this work for anyone to take seriously.

You of course will hear indignant howls of pain from the profiteering promoters of the Rosewell "UFO crash" Myth, but that is just the sound of their cash cow dying. Klass presents the evidence surrounding the Rosewell incident (and the non-evidence invented by the UFO-hucksters) and arrives at the only logical conclusion. The Rosewell "crash" involved a lot of coverup, and no aliens. This book serves as an excellent source for debating the credulous, and along with Kal K. Korff's "The Rosewell UFO Crash : What they don't want you to know" it buries the Rosewell Myth deeper than the Loch Ness. The Truth is Out There. And you can find it in this book.

Having read a number of books by Roswell sceptics as well as Roswell supporters, I must say that Mr. Klass employs the same tactics as some of his "adversaries" by conveniently forgetting to mention key evidence that makes his claims crackle. This is probably due to the fact that challenging the credibility of top ranking Airforce officials or longtime FBI boss J.Edgar Hoover might be more than the author can pull off.

It is not a wise move, however. Things like J. Edgar Hoover's memo, in which he complains over being denied access to a crashed flying disk, have become sort of public knowledge in our days. You don't have to be a UFO expert to ask yourself at times "Hey, how can he write this knowing that Hoover wrote that?".

Anyway, this is the book which the Trust-Our-Government faction in that everlasting Roswell-Dispute has definitely been waiting for. Now that both sides hold definitive "proof" of their own theory in hands, maybe we could head for more recent UFO events. ;))

As an F-104 pilot who chased a "UFO" across South Carolina towards Bermuda at speeds up to 1300kts and altitudes exceeding 65,000 ft msl in 1966, I find Mr Klass's explanations of this incident, and indeed, all UFO activity, to be highly suspect. Perhaps in this instance I too was chasing nothing more than a high altitude weather balloon. Or perhaps, what I saw was a flock of very fast, high flying geese. Or perhaps, even swamp gas, (over the ocean?). I for one would like to see a real investigative study into what goes here, not another sophmoric miscreant explanation that seems prevalent from Mr Klass.