The Roswell Incident

An extraterrestrial spaceship crashed in New Mexico in the early days of July 1947. This would seem to be, on the surface, simply another report that has been kept alive in UFO journals and the thousands of books written about UFOs in all languages. What is different about this case, however, is the vitality of this one single incident and its continuing developments in scientific, government, and legal circles. At the time this book goes to press a civil action has been brought by concerned parties, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, through their attorneys, against the CIA for the purpose of releasing information about crashed UFOs in accord with the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. CAUS, in addition, has taken over a previous suit of the Ground Saucer Watch against the CIA. Among the charges brought by the suits are suppression of media information, withholding of files, muzzling of witnesses, and, in general, hiding information through the use of now unnecessary security classification. Events which had been reported in the press and by radio before security regulations were imposed by the Army Air Force (whose name was changed to the Air Force in that very year, 1947) indicate that material from the wrecked UFO was shuttled by high-security government transportation from base to base and that the remains of the UFO and the dead occupants (one of whom was reportedly alive when found) are under high-security guard at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Those of us who can recall the years before 1947, which was the year of the first well-publicized saucer "invasion," remember reading purportedly factual accounts about what might have been called saucers long before they became popular. These were puzzling reports, carried in meteorological and astronomical journals, containing references to giant airborne objects in the night sky, neither airships nor meteors.