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The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site

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A Review by Frank Warren

As Jesse points out in his recently released book, The Roswell Legacy, "there have been many books written about `the Roswell Incident,' along with a seemingly endless stream of documentaries, movies and editorial pieces" etc. We've certainly been reminded of this fact with all the hoopla surrounding the 60th anniversary of the event, and the festival just held at Roswell.

That being the case . . . what more could be offered? What could be said, that hasn't been rehashed over and over again? Having just finished the book last night, I can say with great enthusiasm, that not only has Jesse revealed "fresh data," he presents it in a most "palatable fashion."

Jesse's "laid back style" which is evident on camera, certainly comes through on the page. Now this isn't to say that he "dulls the reader," quite the opposite in fact, he makes you comfortable, as if we're having a personal chat.

I found Jesse's tome to be many things rolled into one; much more then a story about "Flying Saucers, aliens and a government cover-up"; it was a "tribute' to his father to which his (Jesse Jr.) love and respect was most evident! It was also a tribute to an "American patriot" (Jesse Sr.) and quite frankly I was often moved by his "shared feelings."

The book was also an exposé of the "Marcel family," often times very personal; one might think that Jesse needn't "go there," but as he points out the "Roswell Incident" had a rippling effect for all those called "Marcel." I thought this took a lot of guts; moreover, it certainly was a vital component in telling his story.

For the "Ufologist" and or "Roswell researcher," he doesn't disappoint there either. He recaps the Roswell events, and his involvement; however, he also provides much evidence in support of the truth of the matter, that he became cognizant of so long ago. With this ammunition provided, he effortlessly quashes the "debunker conjecture" and gives the reader a clear conspectus of what took place over 60 years ago in New Mexico.

Along with covering some familiar ground, he also divulges some "new" and very "gripping information"; some readers may in fact find these admissions unsettling. I was not previous aware of these facts, and I must confess I was captivated by those pages! These revelations will undoubtedly re-ignite "Roswell Research!"

Something I felt unique, and ending up very essential to the book, was a chapter penned by Jesse's wife "Linda." In it she gives her perspective, having worked for, then marrying a man, raising a family etc., of someone who is smack dab in the middle of the UFO controversy.

Her views give the reader, an alternative account of their life together, as well as the effect that Ufology has had on her and the Marcel family. Her writing style is like that of Jesse's and one can imagine sitting in her kitchen having a cup of coffee.

At the end of the book, Jesse shares his views on "life in the universe," as well as the motivations for the government withholding and covering up information pertaining to the "UFO phenomenon" and it's source. By this time, the reader has discovered that "Jesse Marcel Jr." isn't some "country boy" living up in Montana, wearing a tinfoil hat! He's a compassionate, intelligent, articulate, patriotic individual!

Finally, most of the a fore mentioned attributes that Jesse holds were mutual between he and his father; in fact I'm sure Jesse Jr. would credit his parents, in particular his father for instilling these values into him. The other admirable trait, is they were/are both "men of their word"; to that end, Jesse made a promise to his father shortly before he died over 20 years ago--this book, this chronicle of events, is a fulfillment and culmination of that promise! Bravo Jesse!

Jesse Marcel Jr. has written a touching vindication of his father, Jesse Marcel, the Security Officer the military asked to look over the debris field on Mac Brazel's farm back in June of 1947. The author was an 11 year-old boy living with his parents near the military base at Roswell New Mexico, and he personally saw and touched parts of the debris as his father excitedly told him it was "not of this world."

The basic story is well known, and Jesse Jr does not provide anything beyond the known facts and research that anyone could do. But the book is a valuable contribution to the legacy of Roswell because the author, besides the fact that he was part of it, focuses on the elements that keep people from believing the debris was from a crashed space ship. Starting with what he sees as a denigration of his father. He shows us in great detail that his father, Jesse Marcel, was technologically astute and well-trained in all aspects of military radar and balloons. It is just not possible that he would not have recognized any kind of balloon in use by the military. The government has admitted that its first claim, that the debris was from a weather balloon, along with the infamous picture of Marcel with the "debris," was a falsehood and a cover-up.

But their more recent report on the Rosell incident claims that the debris was from Project Mogul, which was balloons sent high in the atmosphere to "listen" for evidence of Soviet nuclear testing. However, the author thoroughly researched Project Mogul and shows how this simply does not fit the facts. He states with certainty that the Mogul materials were nothing like what he saw in the family kitchen that night in 1947. He had a chance to personally examine some of the Mogul materials, so his opinion here is based on real knowledge. Beyond that, he researched which Mogul balloons were aloft at the time that could have landed on Mac Brazel's farm, and none of them fit. And beyond that, the debris field was much larger than what you'd get from a Mogul balloon, and, since the Mogul materials were ordinary, the military usually didn't even bother to collect downed balloons. So why, in the Roswell incident, did they scrape up every last piece of debris and have it flown, with armed guards, to Wright-Patterson?

The book is somewhat disorganized and unorthodox in its layout and organization, but I found the rather homespun approach an indication of its authenticity as the real thoughts of the author (and his wife too). No spin here, just an honest recounting of memories and what the incident did to the Marcel family. I was saddened to read that his father became more cynical and took up drinking excessively as he grew older, contemplating the years he had to keep quiet and listen to his government put out "facts" he knew to be false. In his later years, he did talk about it somewhat, including telling Linda Marcel (Jesse Jr's wife) that what he saw in 1947 was "not of this earth."

Everyone has their opinion and debunkers will always be with us, but Jesse Marcel Jr has kept faith with his father's belief that both the father and the son held in their hands pieces of something that came from "out there."

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this book, The Roswell Legacy, for within its pages Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. and his wife, Linda Marcel, give us the answer to the question that mankind has been asking for millenia, "Are we alone in this universe"? The question now becomes "will we have the courage to accept the answer"?

Since the time of "The Roswell Incident", Dr. Jesse Marcel's story has never changed. In this book, The Roswell Legacy, Dr. Jesse Marcel has now thankfully put pen to paper and written his firsthand account of the events of a night in early July, 1947 when his father, Major Jesse Marcel Sr., brought to their home the debris he collected from the site of a crash of what he plainly stated he believed to be from a "flying disc". Jesse vividly describes the contagious excitement his father displayed that night as he exhibited to Jess and Jess's mother Viaud the materials he recovered from the crash site which he was convinced were the remains of an extraterrestrial spacecraft that was "not of this Earth". Jesse details his father's educational background and supplies convincing documentation which dispels any doubt that his father would have been unable to distinguish the materials he found at the site of the crash from those of a conventional aircraft or especially those of a Project Mogul balloon.

I am a physician and I have worked as an anesthesiologist for 22 years. For many of those years I had the privilege of working side by side with Dr. Jesse Marcel in the operating rooms of St. Peter's Hospital in Helena, Montana. Over the years I have come to know Jesse and Linda Marcel well and I can state without reservation that Jesse and Linda Marcel are humble, reliable, honest and straightforward people. As you read the pages of The Roswell Legacy, I can assure that the events described by Jess and Linda are accurate and truthful, for this is the character of both of these individuals.

The extraterrestrial craft that crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 could be likened to a seed of knowledge that fell to Earth upon the desert soil. Mankind has been, for better or for worse, denied the fruits of that seed up until now and as a result our own social evolution has been stunted. For many reasons, enormous resources have been expended over the past 60 years to cover up the truth about Roswell and to prevent the seed from germinating. With the writing of The Roswell Legacy, Dr. Jesse marcel Jr has taken an important step towards fulfilling his father's wish to bring down the veil of secrecy that has obscured the true nature of the crash at Roswell for the past 60 years. The implications of this revelation are staggering, but at last our own starship Earth can begin to redirect its heading toward a path which is paved with truth and enlightenment. I thank Jesse and Linda Marcel for the their time and effort in producing this most important revelation of the truth about Roswell.

Richard O'Connor, MD

This is the true story of Jesse Marcel,Sr.,the first military officer at the 1947 UFO crash site in Roswell, N. M. The book is written by his son, Jesse Marcel, Jr., who was a child at the time. In this book there are actual photos of the material present at the crash site -- foil, metal beams and I-beams with strange shaped markings on them, nothing like any of the languages or symbols known/seen on earth.

The elder Jesse was ordered to keep silent about the UFO crash possibly being extraterrestial. And it was passed off as a weather baloon. Before his passing in 1986, Jesse Marcel made his son promise that he would write the true story of what really happened, and this is it.

I first met Jesse Marcel Jr in England in 2007, and again in 2008 when I was honoured to have the company of Jesse and his wife Linda for dinner in Washington DC. Throughout our acquaintance Jesse came across as one of the most honorable, principled and truthful men I have met, a man to whom any kind of deceit or misrepresentation would be unthinkable. He is a man of great depth and considerable life experience, having had a successful career as a military and civilian ENT surgeon and even as a reservist in his 60s being called to serve as a flight surgeon in Iraq.

In July 1947, as an 11-year old Jesse Jr was awakened by his father in the middle of the night to look at some strange debris brought in from a huge field of similar material in the desert some 80 miles north of Roswell NM. As most readers who know anything about the Roswell crash will know, Jesse Senior was the Intelligence Officer attached to the USAAF's 509th bomb group, at the time the world's only nuclear-armed military unit who had dropped both atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 and now, two years later, relocated their B29s from Tinian to Roswell.

So there was the debris: filling the trunk of the family Buick, with another load on a flat-bed pick-up truck, and the vast majority left strewn out over the desert, a quantity of high-tech and exotic materials greater in volume than 10,000 Mogul Balloons. The exotic materials - a kind of rigid polymer, some tough foil-like material with extraordinary properties, and some lightweight metal I-beams, covered the kitchen floor when emptied from the box used to transport them in the car. Jesse Jr. remains the only acknowledged living person to have handled this material on the public record and has always known, as did his father who died in 1986 somewhat embittered at the official cover-up, that this debris was from something definitely "not made here."

Jesse writes: "I have been asked why I have waited so long to publish the story of what I saw and what my father knew. I must acknowledge that this is certainly an appropriate question, and one I would ask of anyone in my position. Before he passed away in 1986, my father made me promise to see the true story told. Like my father I, too, had kept silent on the matter for many years for I was, like my father, a career military man. Neither of us felt at liberty to challenge the government's official version of what happened...since my father's death I have attempted to tell the story via numerous interviews only to see my words edited, twisted and even fabricated from the whole cloth. I guess I grew tired of seeing the truth filtered through someone else's agenda to the point where it bore little resemblance to the actual events." So there we have it. Jesse states that only in his 60s and in the life-threatening situation in Iraq did he finally resolve to conquer his procrastination and write the book to set the record straight.

It's worth reading, too. At only 182 pages it's a straightforward, honest, from-the-heart narrative of his personal involvement with the legacy of the 1947 crash, and does contain some very interesting stuff. Particularly eye-popping is chapter 6, wherein Jesse was invited to Washington DC, and in a private meeting deep in the bowels of the Capitol Building was briefed by a government official about the "government within the government" and about the huge sums appropriated by the "black budgets." The meeting began with the government official holding up a copy of Strieber's novel "Majestic" and saying: "This is not fiction." From some writers (Philip Corso?) this might be dismissed as an extravagant fantasy, but I discussed this with Jesse face-to-face and knowing his unassailable integrity and his modesty am absolutely convinced this account is factual. The meeting then further discussed reasons for the cover-up, when it might be officially ended, and what elected politicians are not told but want to uncover about the ET issue.

The author explores the question of extraterrestrial life, the 60+ years of weak and risible cover-up stories (Mogul balloons) and the book also contains an interesting chapter written by Linda Marcel. Overall it comes across as honest, straightforward, truthful, free from speculation and written with some humility. Jesse is a man of unshakeable religious conviction and has a genuine goodness of heart which brings warmth and humanity to the narrative.

It has obviously been tough for someone like Jesse Marcel Jr, brought up to respect and honor country and constitution, to confront the fact that in reality there are covert forces in the government which are quite ready to ride roughshod over the constitution and all norms of decency, threatening the country's best and most civic-minded citizens in the name of "national security" and forcing concealment of the greatest truth in human history: that we are not alone in the universe, and we know it.

The reader should not expect a research-type book, arguing a point with extensive references and pushing an agenda. It's not that kind of book: it's a straightforward, heartfelt and at core simple story told by someone who knows and has always known something remarkable to be true. Because the book is so truthful and such an enjoyable read I would unreservedly recommend it. You could read it in a weekend, and you should.

I really enjoyed "The Roswell Legacy," both for its content and its informal style.

You know, the only kinds of evidence allowed in a court of law are eye-witness testimony, expert testimony, and physical evidence, and Jesse Marcel Jr. provides us with two of the three--eye-witness and expert testimony. Not only did he see and handle some of the Roswell material, but he is a career military man and a medical doctor. So he has very impressive credentials.

Alas, if we could only come up with some of the physical evidence!

He has three sentences that I particularly like: The first is on p. 38, "While [at the Army's radar school at Langley, Virginia], he [Jesse Marcel Sr.] studied all varieties of Rawin radar targets, including the ML-307 reflectors used on the Mogul device later alleged to be the source of the material found at the Roswell site." In other words, the senior Marcel would have been completely familiar with the Mogul wreckage--if the Roswell material had been from a Mogul array.

The next passage I particularly liked was on p. 162, "I think that for whatever reasons, the most vocal skeptics have a need to ridicule people who believe in the reality of the exterrestrial visitations." Sad but true.

And the final passage is the last sentence in the book, on p. 169: "It is my deepest wish that their eyes [of our children and grandchildren] will remain open so that they may experience a universe filled with wonders we can scarcely imagine." Amen.

Well done, Dr. Marcel!

As time passes, more and more information is slowly coming out concerning one of the most important UFO recovery insidents in the past century. Unfortunately, the original witnesses are dying off at an alarming rate, making it imperitive that books like this, writen by first hand and second hand witnesses see print. The truth is out there and, hopefully, this generation will live long enough see our government reveal the facts on Roswell that have been hidden for these past sixty years. This is a must read for anyone who has a serious interest in what happened outside of Roswell back in the summer of 1947.

I have personally met and visited with Jesse Marcel Jr. and his wife. Mr. Marcel is a straight forward, honest man who was there. He did witness the physical artifacts (wreckage), and truthfully shares his account of what really happened inside the kitchen of his boyhood home that night in 1947. With honest and painful effort, Jesse gives us the effects of the "crash" on his fathers life, his mothers life, and the the lives of himself and his family. This is a wonderful book, and I quickly read right through it. I want to thank Jesse and his wife for taking the time, and energy to tell their story. No, not a story...the truth! God bless you both.

This book answered many of the questions I had after reading the book by Stanton Friedman. It gives more credibility that something significant happened in 1947 and the difficult dilemma placed on Major Marcel at the time. Having gone over and over the symbols, as remembered by the author, based on my knowlege of English, French, German, Japanese, Russian and the ancient written forms of the Babylonians, Chinese, Egyptians, Phoenicians and ancient runes, the nearest thing they could represent would be some form of hieroglyphics. Of course this is all conjecture, and without a reference, virtually impossible to gauge the authenticity or decipher their meaning.

Still, something did happen out there that year . . . what exactly we may never know. Until and unless some form of government confirmation is revealed and verified Roswell will remain a mystery deeply steeped in the conspiracy annals of history.

For those expecting an earth shattering expose that the aliens actually lived at the Marcel house...uh, sorry. But if you just want to read the complete story of which I had heard parts of from other books/writers and get the insight of all the other explanations and alternate official theories, then you will enjoy this book. Actually, I enjoyed reading this book more than I expected. It wasn't "fluffy" but was very factual and such an enjoyable read as it was presented as if you were sitting there listening to the author talk. I'm glad he wrote it and I'm glad I read it.