Roswell skeptics. Modern day mythology?

originally posted by: ConspiracyMysteries
a reply to: Blue Shift
But the bit about the Cold War being a front for USA and ussr to build up army and spend billions on weapon developments to deter aliens from invading.

Using the space race as a front for the development of a sophisticated global tracking and telecommunications network (of which the internet is a tiny portion) makes reasonable sense, but I always just saw it as people trying to make more money by commoditizing every physical and conceptual thing in reality. Not something we're doing to prepare to fight aliens.

But we're still working on it, I guess. Starlink. SpaceX. Moving space development and control into private hands to bypass the bureaucracy. So things can get done fast. Navy confirming UAP footage to get us used to the idea that we might see one of these things soon. Ours or theirs? Is something coming? Something relatively soon? Was the supposed intervention in the timeline at Roswell a success or is there a possibility of failure - or did it already fail and we haven't felt it sink in yet?

That's conspiracy thinking, sure. But sometimes there are curious patterns.

a reply to: ConspiracyMysteries
Everything about roswell was "leaked".

All these official records but no actual objects?

They want us to think they've got alien tech.
And it worked.

a reply to: ConspiracyMysteries

The majority of the book is an account of Colonel Philip Corso's claims that he was assigned to a secret government program that provided some material recovered from crashed spacecraft to private industry (without saying where the items came from) to reverse engineer them for corporate use.

That was the same scenario that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, there was a secret government organization developing radio broadcast and reception equipment. Tesla had been using a fairly sensitive receiver that was so sensitive it picked up the storms on Jupiter in the late 1800's. I think of Tesla as a dis/information source for the early 1900's. He worked with Samuel Clemens the MSM author of the day who came and went with Haleys comet. So Roswell might have been an ending point for that NWO campaign? The decision to move forward with the atomic bomb started with the return of the comet, and possibly even plans for a WW2. There was the radio broadcast of War of the worlds psyop in the US 1938. The 1897 printed version of the war of the worlds didn't have nearly the same effect. Would require believing in a NWO that was operated in complete secrecy outside the official story though. There was various space and communication technology in the 1940's that had been developed during WW2 but why focus on the single date for disclosure?

stevenjohnson.com...

originally posted by: ConspiracyMysteries
a reply to: joelr

Right back down the rabbit hole. Then what do you think of the likes of Stan Friedman

I posted this video in op as was first documentary I hd seen which was skeptics led.

Comparing then with documentaries such as

But when I see the the late Stan Friedman and his early publishing’s then his online videos dismissing the project mogel stuff hard to make ones mind up its back and forth

It exactly what I'm talking about. An interview with an old lady edited to just show a clip of her seeing "weird foil".
Another lady saying she held weird foil and a guy saying the eye beams were strange. But notice he said that the eye beams were the "most unusual part". That's it?
First of all that isn't dead aliens and a crashed alien ufo that we can back engineer. Also if it were alien these people would have been put in isolation for months. But again, none of these people are saying that the other objects were not there, they are just showing quick clips about foil.
And what was also there was rubber, balsa wood, strings and considerable scotch tape. All conveniently left out of the eyewitness descriptions in this video. That is a false narrative.

Then they say the highest ranking officers showed up. Of course they did this device was dealing with nuclear weapons the highest level of top secret that was possible in the military.

Then a guy goes into the press release about a flying disk. Cool, here is more statements also in the release. The newspaper used the statement to describe the actual full details. In other words they were not trying to create a false narrative by editing what was said.

"On July 8, 1947, RAAF public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disc", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell. As described in the July 9, 1947, edition of the Roswell Daily Record:

The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet [3.5 m] long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards [180 m] in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet [1 m] long and 7 or 8 inches [18 or 20 cm] thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches [45 or 50 cm] long and about 8 inches [20 cm] thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds [2 kg]. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.[10]


What more can be said? You cannot erase these facts that the first eyewitness gave. What Stan Friedman did was the same as every television show did. They focused on the foil, which was a bit odd and quickly moved on to one sentence from the press release (flying disk) then to top brass military showing up and then to lies told in the 1970's.
Friedman never mentions scotch tape or anything else that shows what this actually was.
He also did 2 separate "debate" videos that were works. Fake. He never actually debated anyone who came at him with questions about the eyewitness statements and press releases. Most non-skeptics just took the stories in the book as gospel and never thought to actually find out what was actually said. Myself included, for many years.
ALthough I was always like "wait, how does weird foil debris later become a ufo craft and dead aliens?"


There was also a A telex sent to a Federal Bureau of Investigation that said:
"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County."


What they also said was:

"The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a ballon [sic] by cable, which ballon [sic] was approximately twenty feet (6 m) in diameter."


My question is how can anyone see " When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet " and still attach some alien agenda to this event?
Also listen to any pro-Roswell persons argument. They do not in any way account for the giant hep of initial statements that talk about mundane debris. They point to completely non-related sightings, the " something seems odd here", or any other type of indirect logic or confirmation bias. Not one person has ever acknowledged that Brazle claimed to find strings, rubber, foil, scotch tape and that the "flying disk" also looked to have been suspended by a balloon and so on and from there went on to make a pro-ufo argument. They have to ignore all of the actual information and jump to nonsense told in the 1970's.
No author of any Roswell books ever reported the actual details of the debris. They did this under the guise of writing a "documentary" or being an "investigative journalist".


Sucks. The ufo field has never recovered. I'm surprised they even got funding to do that recent project that lasted a few years. There will not be funding while obvious myths are the representations of the field.

originally posted by: joelr

It exactly what I'm talking about. An interview with an old lady edited to just show a clip of her seeing "weird foil".
Another lady saying she held weird foil and a guy saying the eye beams were strange. But notice he said that the eye beams were the "most unusual part". That's it?

Re the I-Beams, they were coated in glue for strength. The Air Force decided to use the time-tested method of weather balloons to launch the equipment for the MOGUL program. The only issue, weather balloons were designed and intended to be flown for short periods of a couple/few hours while MOGUL needed flights to be higher and to stay aloft for longer periods. Enter the reason why the same material would have been strengthened and why the beams used for weather balloons were coated. The foil was backed with heavy paper for the same reason. The answer is logical and clear if the believers in this tale will drop their bias.
Quotes from The Roswell Report:

I think some of the balsa wood was dipped in something like Elmer's glue, and as a result had some sort of glue coating on it which would make it somewhat resistant to burning.

...balsa wood beams that were coated in an "Elmer's-type" glue to enhance their durability

An alien spacecraft is built of foil, small sticks, rubber, eyelets, and parchment? Exactly how experimental MOGUL balloon launches were that were taking place 90 miles away on the exact date? How coincidental!

a reply to: joelr

Everybody has their favorite Roswell door, Stan Friedman worked for security at the lab that developed the nuclear aircraft engine.
Roswell occurred after the Nuremberg trials just before the charter for the US covert intelligence gathering agency was granted.
Stan claimed to be a truther, but admitted that catchers in the rye have their limits.
Interesting detail in Stan's video was that he started lecturing about Roswell in 1978 the same year I became aware of the lab he worked for.
There might be a synchronicity in the selection process for comprehending Roswell.
Similar process to the way people attribute the lyrics in music?
Stan covered that with the Cole example (IMO).

I'm trying to figure out how those in charge at Roswell in '47, (the base housing the world's most secure nukes at the time) could mistake a weather balloon for a saucer with bodies. Enough to the point where they pass it up the chain to the press. If Project Mogul was so secret, certainly someone would have been briefed before calling the papers. Anyone wanna take a crack at this?

a reply to: NightVision

Most are trying to figure out where the claim of bodies came from. Thin air, it seems.

a reply to: NightVision

I'm trying to figure out how those in charge at Roswell in '47, (the base housing the world's most secure nukes at the time) could mistake a weather balloon for a saucer with bodies.

There were no contemporary reports of alien bodies if you check the 1947 reports. Aliens entered the story in the 1980s when Glenn Dennis made up a story about a Nurse he knew from the RAAF base, Naomi Self, seeing them. She never existed.

Even Jesse Marcel never spoke of alien bodies.

Here he is in a 1980 interview. He never mentions them once.

Enough to the point where they pass it up the chain to the press.

You have to remember that in early July 1947 'flying saucer' was a term that had been coined a week or so earlier. There was no connection to it being 'alien spacecraft' back then. So it could be that someone at the base wanted to be the first to capture one of these mysterious objects and got over excited and issued the press release.

If Project Mogul was so secret, certainly someone would have been briefed before calling the papers. Anyone wanna take a crack at this?

The equipment itself was not top secret. The objective of Mogul was to use that equipment to monitor Soviet nuclear tests was top secret. So no one on the base would necessarily know about Mogul. Nor have a need to know.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: NightVision

Most are trying to figure out where the claim of bodies came from. Thin air, it seems.

If they were using corpses (or live "volunteers") for high-altitude testing, then "thin air" would literally be the correct answer.

a reply to: Blue Shift

I said "claims."

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Blue Shift

I said "claims."

Sorry my metaphor was not specifically on point. Sheesh. Tough crowd.

I always assumed that the claims of bodies was a confabulation with the 1948 Aztec UFO crash - fictional or not. There were always bodies associated with that crash.

originally posted by: NightVision
I'm trying to figure out how those in charge at Roswell in '47, (the base housing the world's most secure nukes at the time) could mistake a weather balloon for a saucer with bodies. Enough to the point where they pass it up the chain to the press. If Project Mogul was so secret, certainly someone would have been briefed before calling the papers. Anyone wanna take a crack at this?

First off, including in the headline "flying saucer" didn't necessarily mean alien spacecraft in 1947. If that was printed today in 2020 after 70+ years of stories and claims, it would have. Nothing in that article mentions anything about aliens. You have to remove the same meaning and mindset of today for 70 years ago. Kenneth Arnold had just coined the phrase "saucer" with his story. WWII just ended as the result of the use of the atomic bomb and paranoia was high in the US. We were afraid of other countries developing nuclear weapons which is why we were trying to use balloons to listen for detonations. Flying disc could have as easily have meant some type of spy craft. At the time, Japan had been launching Fu-Go balloons with bombs attached. In 1945 in Oregon, 6 people were killed with one of these bombs.
www.wired.com...

The story started with Mac Brazel and not the military. He had already talked with the sheriff in Roswell so news had already spread of a flying disc as a result of Brazel hoping he could collect a reward that was offered at the time. An overzealous reporter wrote the headline. Jesse Marcel even said:

...meantime we had an eager-beaver public relations officer, he found out about it, he calls the AP about it and that's when it hit the fan

The wording of the headline shows this overly eager reporting. "A flying saucer was captured". Nothing was captured, it had crashed and someone walked up on it. But after WWII, US pride was high. A small town newspaper writing a headline that would go across the country. People trusted the military at the time so when they came out that it was just a weather balloon, the public accepted it. And that's what it essentially was. It wasn't heard about again until UFO researcher Stanton Friedman latched onto it. He bypassed simple logic with the first part and foundation of the story. The materials found. The witness he interviewed, Jesse Marcel describes small sticks, foil-like material, and parchment, but he skips over the similarities to sell this UFO tale.

originally posted by: NightVision
I'm trying to figure out how those in charge at Roswell in '47, (the base housing the world's most secure nukes at the time) could mistake a weather balloon for a saucer with bodies. Enough to the point where they pass it up the chain to the press. If Project Mogul was so secret, certainly someone would have been briefed before calling the papers. Anyone wanna take a crack at this?

The weather balloon story was a cover up. There are no reports of alien bodies or ships from any eyewitness at the time. Not military or civilian.
There were 2 statements given to press from the FBI and the military. One did include the words "flying disk"
and also stated:

"The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet [3.5 m] long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards [180 m] in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet [1 m] long and 7 or 8 inches [18 or 20 cm] thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches [45 or 50 cm] long and about 8 inches [20 cm] thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds [2 kg]. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. "


The FBI statement also included:

"The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a ballon [sic] by cable, which ballon [sic] was approximately twenty feet (6 m) in diameter."

Later on the same day they scrapped everything and said it was a weather balloon. So this hexagonal disk with rubber, foil, scotch tape and so on was something they wanted to cover up. Now we know it was Mogal.
Dead aliens do not enter the story until someone wrote a book in 1979 as an "investigative journalist", left out all the press releases about tin, rubber and scotch tape and left out any civilian descriptions of tape, foil and rubber and focused on the foil.

The only time I saw someone try to answer questions about the debris was on a Youtube video of some talk show in the 80's. They asked this guy why he believed this was a cover up if the debris was clearly mundane and actually contained scotch tape and he said "oh, well the alien crash wasn't the Brazle crash site, it was a different crash site on the same day".
Unfortunately he forgot to have a meeting with all the other Roswell "journalists" and get to a consensus about what they were going to say actually happened. At least he recognized the story doesn't work as is.
Stanton Friedman never answered those questions. He did a "debate" with a guy who didn't challenge any beliefs but rather has a different take on what the ufos are. They both just assumed Roswell was a real alien crash.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: NightVision

Most are trying to figure out where the claim of bodies came from. Thin air, it seems.

1st mentioned in book form:
In 1980, Moore wrote The Roswell Incident with writing partner Charles Berlitz, which alleged the Roswell UFO incident had involved the crash of an extraterrestrial space ship.

then in a documentary:

UFOs Are Real (1979)

a reply to: joelr

Here’s that doc

Interesting thread - Albeit a bit retreaded.

I came to/found ATS on my search down the UFOlogy rabbit hole. Read a lot on the subject - but perhaps not as much as some members.

I’d say rehashing Roswell at this point is kind of a waste of calories. Nothing “new” has come along in some time - no docs, no new death bed confessions (publicly), etc. although I do appreciate the first hand account in this thread.

My view is something happened - and it wasn’t a weather balloon. Does that mean ETs? Not necessarily. Whatever crashed could have been a UFO, it could have been advanced military tech that seemed like “alien tech” to someone in the 40s (I say that as the smart phone I’m typing this on would probably have been seen as ET level tech in the 40s) or it could be entirely fabricated.

What’s most likely? No one can say for sure. I’d argue that something that wasn’t a weather balloon crashes and we recovered it. I can’t entirely discount the UFO angle, however - some pieces of the story suggest the UFO angle is correct...

originally posted by: EnigmaChaser


What’s most likely? No one can say for sure. I’d argue that something that wasn’t a weather balloon crashes and we recovered it. I can’t entirely discount the UFO angle, however - some pieces of the story suggest the UFO angle is correct...

The weather balloon thing is completely debunked, wasn't a weather balloon, that is known to be a cover up.
But what suggests a ufo?

Beyond that how does an eyewitness description like this not completely rule out a ufo?

"The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet [3.5 m] long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards [180 m] in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet [1 m] long and 7 or 8 inches [18 or 20 cm] thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches [45 or 50 cm] long and about 8 inches [20 cm] thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds [2 kg]. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. "

This would have had to have been a lie. But this was the same release that said "flying disk" and was before the balloon story. Also Brazle's description matched this along with all initial reports.

originally posted by: ConspiracyMysteries
a reply to: joelr

Here’s that doc

Wow they are not even trying. That's worse than I remember. Star map? Jesse Marcel confirmed it was a crashed ufo?

Is there anywhere in existence an actual full interview with this Jesse Marcel? Ufo tales say he handled debris and usually quote this - "which he characterized as “not of this world."

Non-bias sources include things with more information like:
"Wilcox called RAAF Major Jesse Marcel, and Marcel brought Lt Colonel Sheridan Cavitt and Master Sergeant Bill Rickett to the ranch where more pieces were picked up.[8] "[We] spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon [July 7] looking for any more parts of the weather device", said Marcel. "We found a few more patches of tinfoil and rubber."[9]"

So Marcel was the one who posed for the cover up pic with the weather balloon but he also was leading the debris recovery. So it seems like a full interview with him could clear this all up. For some reason people can't seem to get behind Brazle's and the Sherriff' description of rubber and tape but I have a feeling Marcel wasn't ever allowed to talk about the Mogal debris so that probably doesn't exist.

Lot of misinformation popping up in this thread.

"Only one person mentioned alien bodies".

Actually 3 other people saw alien bodies that were recovered from the crash site, not the debris field., and were stored in a hangar at the Roswell base before being flown out by -

Pappy Henderson

Also,

Walter Haut was allowed to view the bodies in the hangar with base commander Blanchard who was his buddy from WWII where they were both bomber pilots for the 509th over Germany.

As for alleged "tape with flowers and writing on it" Jesse Marcel Jr. saw no such tape in the wreckage his father spread out on the kitchen table for his family to see.

The only things with writing on it were the I beams, and the writing was "strange symbols" , not Japanese as some have alleged.

Also, nobody tried to burn the tin foil. They tried to burn the the pieces of what appeared to be balsa wood, which would not burn and also could not be "whittled".