It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Col. Thomas Dubose, Gen. Ramey's Chief of Staff, said he was notified of the find by Gen. Clemence McMullen in Washington, acting head of the Strategic Air Command. Dubose said McMullen ordered him to fly some debris samples immediately to Washington by "colonel courier." (This debris was possibly samples that Brazel had brought with him to Roswell when he reported his discovery.) McMullen instructed Dubose that everything was to be carried out in the strictest secrecy.
(5) In early July, I received a phone call from Maj. Gen. Clements McMullen, Deputy Commander, Strategic Air Command. He asked what we knew about the object which had been recovered outside Roswell, New Mexico, as reported in the press. I called Col. William Blanchard, Commander of the Roswell Army Air Field and directed him to send the material in a sealed container to me at Fort Worth. I so informed Maj. Gen. McMullen.
(6) After the plane from Roswell arrived with the material, I asked the Base Commander, Col. Al Clark, to take possession of the material and to personally transport it in a B-26 to Maj. Gen. McMullen in Washington, D.C. I notified Maj. Gen. McMullen, and he told me he would send the material by personal courier on his plane to Benjamin Chidlaw, Commanding General of the Air Material Command at Wright Field [later Wright Patterson AFB]. The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy.
(Dubose also added that he was handling the situation because Ramey was away from the base at the time. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Ramey's home-town newspaper, the Denton (TX) Record-Chronicle, documents that he was at an airshow in Denton all day on Sunday, July 6.)
Dubose said he met the flight from Roswell early that night. The debris was in a sealed, opaque bag attached to the courier's wrist. The bag of debris was transferred to another plane and to the Fort Worth AAF commanding officer, Col. Alvin Clark, who acted as the new courier. This flight then headed to Washington.
Dubose added that McMullen later told him that the debris was then forwarded to Wright Field, Ohio, on McMullen's personal plane. Wright Field was the home of the AAF's aeronautical labs, which would have been a suitable place to have the debris analyzed. Dubose said he was also told the matter went straight to the White House.
"He [Brazel] took us to that place, and we started picking up fragments, which was foreign to me. I'd never seen anything like that. I didn't know what we were picking up. I still don't know. As of this day, I still don't know what it was. And I brought as much of it back to the base as I could and -- Well, some ingenious young GI thought he'd try to match a few pieces together and see if he could match something. I don't think he ever matched two pieces. It was so fragmented. It was strewn over a wide area, I guess maybe three-quarters of a mile long and a few hundred feet wide. So we loaded it up and we came back to the base." – Major Jesse Marcel, 1979 Bob Pratt interview
They came out on the side of a hill. In front of them was a shallow, narrow valley with a rounded, rocky area at one end. The other end opened gradually until it was nothing more than a pasture sloping down into another, bigger valley. "The gouge started up there and moved down in that direction," said Brazel. He described the gouge as running from the northwest to the southeast. It looked as if the thing had hit and bounced, scattering debris in the field. The gouge wasn't very deep but was about ten feet wide in places. The whole thing was about five hundred feet long. – Bill Brazel Jr., interviews with Randle and Schmidt.
Sometime on Monday, July 7, 1947, William Ware "Mack" Brazel was picked up at his ranch and whisked back to Roswell for an exclusive interview at KGFL.
George "Jud" Roberts, minority owner of the station, later said, "They hid him out at Whit's [Walt Whitmore Sr.'s] house. Kept him there overnight." The KGFL staff made a wire recording of their Q&A with the rancher, but because KGFL had already signed off for the day they planned to break the full story the next morning.
1) My name is Lydia A Sleppy
(2) My address is: XXXXXXXXXX
(3) I am employed as: _________________________________
(X)I am retired: 9/30/77 from State of California, Dept. Parks & Recreation
(4) In 1947, worked at KOAT Radio in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My duties included operating the station's teletype machine, which received news and allowed us to send stories to the ABC and Mutual networks, with which KOAT was affiliated.
(5) In early July 1947, I received a call from John McBoyle, general manager and part-owner of KSWS Radio in Roswell, New Mexico, which was associated with KOAT. I do not remember the exact date, but it definitely was a weekday (I never worked weekends) and almost certainly after the Fourth of July. The call came in before noon. (from all sources, this is July 7, 1947)
(6) McBoyle said he had something hot for the network. I asked Karl Lambertz, our program director and acting manager (KOAT owner and manager Merle Tucker was out of town), to be present in my office while I took the story from McBoyle and put it on the teletype. Using the teletype, I alerted ABC News headquarters in Hollywood to expect an important story, and Mr. Lambertz stood behind me while I typed.
(7) To the best of my recollection, McBoyle said, "There's been one of these flying saucer things crash down here north of Roswell." He said he had been in a coffee shop on his morning break when a local rancher, "Mac" Brazel, came in and said he had discovered the object some time ago while he was out riding on the range, and that he had towed it in and stored it underneath a shelter on his property. Brazel offered to take McBoyle to the ranch to see the object. McBoyle described it as "a big crumpled dishpan."
(8) As I typed McBoyle's story, a bell rang on the teletype, indicating an interruption. The machine then printed a message something to this effect: "THIS IS THE FBI. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL COMMUNICATION." Whatever the precise words were, I definitely remember the message was from the FBI and that it directed me to stop transmitting. I told McBoyle the teletype had been cut off and took the rest of his story in shorthand, but we never put it on the wire because we had been scooped by the papers.
(9) I never again discussed the matter with McBoyle, but the next day, he told Mr. Lambertz the military had isolated the area where the saucer was found and was keeping the press out. He told Lambertz he saw planes come in from Wright Field, Ohio, to take the thing away. He also said they claimed they were going to take it to one place, but the planes went to another. Either they were supposed to have gone to Texas but went to Wright Field or vice versa.
(10) I have not been paid or given anything of value to make this statement, and it is the truth to the best of my recollection.
Signed: Lydia A. Sleppy
Date: 9-14-93
Signature witnessed by:
Ada A Somers