FBI Releases Document Confirming Roswell UFO 481
schwit1 writes "An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as circular in shape with raised centers approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape, but only 3 feet tall dressed in metallic clothing of very fine texture."
Questions. (Score:5, Interesting)
This raises more questions than answers. For a start, this really is on vault.fbi.gov servers, so either it's real or a VERY risky hoax.
However, assuming it's real for now, WHY HAS THIS NOT LEAD TO A FLURRY OF OTHER EVIDENCE FROM ELSEWHERE?
Clearly the mask is off now? The government know about saucers, otherwise there wouldn't be such a casual write-off at the end of the doc.
So were they short Russians? Germans who found it in a barn after WWII and got it working? COME ON FBI, do your jobs and give us a proper INVESTIGATION!
Re:Great news! (Score:5, Interesting)
According to Mr. _______ informant
They debriefed their informant and recorded down what he said. It doesn't necessarily mean FBI actually believe the information provided. Under the FOIA you can't just destroy the document because the source wore a tin-foil hat.
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, this is only a filing of the report, no follow-up. It's customary in every law enforcement organisation to file every report, no matter how stupid. Hell, I've heard about the police filing a report by a guy claiming every evening, after the news ran, the newscasters came out of his TV set, and beat him. No investigation was done, naturally, but the report had to be filed, as the SOP went.
Just another sensationalist samzenpus headline, it would seem...
Suspicious timing (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the Roswell folklore has always been that the story completely went away until the point in time when, coincidentally, the actual witnesses had died of old age.
Re:Last words... (Score:4, Interesting)
"What's in your wallet?" - Capital One, 2009
Re:Dwarf test pilots (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets assume that something happened. There was a communication blackout, the local undertaker was asked to provide three child-sized coffins and thereafter the Army Air Force claim that nothing happened.
The "oddball" theory is that a scaled-down test plane, manned by children crashed in the desert. Can you imagine the US Government ever admitting to that?
Re:It's the NUKE CODES! (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought this was a reference to early sightings of over the horizon nuclear tests that needed to be suppressed, during the time of Oppenheimer.
I had been assuming the stories were a "second cover".
This is a psychological ploy allegedly used by security agencies to hide things that are really important and worth the effort. They set up two cover stories: The first cover story is public and something plausible. The second cover story is nutty and withheld, but evidence for it is planted. When somebody realizes that the first cover is a lie and digs deeper they encounter the planted evidence for the mind-numbingly wild second cover. Then they are placed in the position of either looking like a fruitcake or giving up. (After all, anything they dig up on the REAL story could also be another lie.)
If it is a second cover, the existence of such a memo in the archives could just be a leftover piece of the planted evidence.
As for what's behind the hypothetical second cover, an explanation released a few years back seems plausible: Balloon-lofted high-altitude drop tests of a predecessor to the mercury capsule reentry heat shield - which looked a lot like the contemporary depictions of flying saucers.
The Cold War was raging at the time and the early space program was military and extremely secret. So tests on the first cut at retrieving people and devices from orbit would logically be performed at a remote, highly-classified, military aircraft test site, with the agencies going to extreme lengths to cover the work from spies, just as they did with the Manhattan Project.
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Re:Dwarf test pilots (Score:2, Interesting)
The "oddball" theory is that a scaled-down test plane, manned by children crashed in the desert. Can you imagine the US Government ever admitting to that?
Why not?
The US government will admit to killing hundreds [wikipedia.org] of unarmed civilians (children included) as well as quite a few other undesirable things. [wikipedia.org]
It just takes time for the full story to come out.
1947 should be "old enough" for that type of info, especially considering the amount of people that would have had to have been involved with the alleged program and "coverup".