Roswell Declassified

John3 writes "Scotland may be the most popular UFO destination on the planet, but Roswell, New Mexico is the old favorite for government conspiracy buffs who believe the US government has been hiding proof of an alien spacecraft crash in 1947. Popular Mechanics has recently gained access to de-classified documents from the Roswell military base, and they contain no entries of unusual events or activity. I wonder if the release of these documents will deter the conspiracy theorists?"

Comments

It won't :)

[zaqattack911]

Conspiracy theorists are only fed by government denials. Look what happened to NASA when they started to talk back at Moon landing doubters.

zuchini

Re:It won't :)

[dissy]

(snip) You dont have proof we landed on the moon (/snip)

Well, we do have proof that we have sent craft to the moon.
There is a flag on a pole that you can see with a powerful telescope, controlled by the same places that give us the wonders of technology we can see the outcome of on earth.

There are also mirrors on the moon which you can use to reflect lasers back (Granted the hardware to do this is pricy, but 'anyone' can do it)

Now, this just proves we have sent things up into space that ended up on the moon.
Doesnt prove it was a person.

But using your basic logic, if we have the technology to send a craft to the moon that can plant a flag and posistion mirrors, and return with samples from the moon, that exact same technology could very well hold a person inside as well.

Its sorta like saying people dont fly fighter jets because you cant see the people when the planes fly overhead.
While that is logically true, if you look at a jet, there IS room for a person in there, so its not at all improbable or impossible.

But there is just no convincing some people i guess :)

deter or encourage

[Stinson]

either this will deter conspiracists, or just give them a new argument that the government removed the unusual entries before declassifying them. There really will never be a way to prove that declassified documents aren't modified

Right

[Matthaeus]

And the documents that were declassified were all the documents associated with Roswell, right? All unaltered? Hey, look over there!

Not that I'm a rabid conspiracy theorist, but anybody who is willing to believe in a government coverup of that magnitude won't be pacified by a bunch of relatively easily-faked "declassified" documents.

Re:Right

[StarTux]

Considering Clinton was unable to hide his affair and that the F117 was also known well enough about I doubt, very much doubt anything of this magnitude could be hidden. Heck, even the Chinese stole nuclear secrets.

Will it deter conspiracy "theorists" ?

[Infonaut]

Uh.. no.

Conspiracy theories are not really theories, in that they can never be disproved. The theory that the earth is flat can be disproved; the theory that aliens have infiltrated the highest levels of government can't be disproved.

Conspiracy theory is a belief system, and as such is highly resistant to facts.

Conspiracy theorists.

[Montreal Geek]

I think the poster misses the point about how conspiracy theorists think entirely.

If the files show no information about anything odd happening, then of course it means they were cleaned to hide the truth. The fact that there is no proof of their pet theory is proof that there was a cover up to hide it.

This is the reason why those kooks annoy me so much; it's not that they beleive in a complicated, contrived scenario so much as they use the lack of proof for their delusion as proof of correctness. Making them, by definition, immune to logic or facts.

This is probably going to hurt my karma to dare say so, but one cannot help but notice the parralel with most religious beleif systems.

I guess the bad-guy-of-faith has been transposed from satan to some illuminati for those who feel the need to explain life by intervention deus ex machina rather than accept its unpredictability.

-- MG

Re:Conspiracy theorists.

[Surak]

Strange. I would say that I "believe in the Bible", because archaeological and historical evidence bear it out - from fulfilled prophecies, to supernatural events, to plain old facts. Its remarkable insight into human nature could also be considered contributory evidence of its divine nature.

Really? So rabbits chew their cud? There is archaeological and historical evidence of an actual flood that occurred 3000-4000 years ago in which all the people and animals of the earth were populated from the ones on that took a ride on an ark? The earth is only 6,000 years old? The earth is flat and has four corners? Note also that there is NO RECORD of Jesus bin Miriam's birth, life, or death (other than the Bible) despite the fact that the Romans kept meticulous records. Also note that there is no Egyptian record of the Jewish people ever being enslaved by them, and then freed by Moses, despite the fact that Egyptians also kept meticulous records.

There holes in the Bible big enough to drive a Sherman tank through without hitting anything.

Fake

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Those de-classified reports are obviously fake. The real UFO documents will never be de-classified due humanity's inability to deal with Extra-Terrestrial life on this planet.

Well, all personal conspiracy theories aside, why would this stop anyone from making up conspiracy theories? No one in their right mind would believe that the government would declassify documents that they feel could be damaging to themselves or the US public. Are they gonna declassify that they shot JFK (if they did) even 100 years from now? I think not.

Re:No closure here

[ibennetch]

But then again, the only proof may or may not be locked in a hanger somewhere, it's hard to tell.

True, but the thing that I question (assuming "something" happened there, which I neither have an opinion on nor care about, this is just a mind-game) is the first-hand reports of the military and government personel who were involved -- especially in any cover-up. Here's what happens:

- Something happens
- "they" cover it up, remove all evidence and delete any documents reporting anything about "it"
- Everyone invovled dies of old age (Roswell was what, fifty years ago -- another twenty or thirty years and no first-hand witnesses will be around)
- No one ever finds out the truth

What an odd idea

[kfg]

"I suspect that once the world is dominated by one country, one culture, one affinity, that we will actually know the truth."

This is like saying that if there were only one newspaper we'd know the truth. Or that China is the paragon of open information.

It is only through the maintenence of mulitiple sources of information, power and control that the truth can ever be known.

KFG

Put your tin foil hats away, please

[stwrtpj]

Rather than replying to a whole bunch of tin foil hat brigade posts, I'm going to combine what I know of the case into one post. In my younger and more foolish days, I was a UFO nut and soaked up every account of alien visitors. As I got older, I started looking at many of the facts of the case in a more objective light.

The conclusion I have come to is that the Roswell case is a conglomeration of multiple accounts of unrelated occurences occuring over the span of ten years that were later cobbled together into a single, misinformed account.

There is one very important fact that needs to be made clear about the entire Rosewell bru-ha-ha. A lot the publicity for it, namely the theory that an alien spacecraft crashed there, did not come about until well after the incident. In fact, it was not until as late as 1978 that alien bodies were ever associated with the incident.

So, bearing this in mind, here are some of the little factoids about the case that appear to have perfectly logical explanations:

• The little alien bodies - For some time durintg the late 1940s and early 1950s, the USAF conducted a series of tests which involved shoving anthropomorphic dummies out of planes from high altitude, usually to test parachute equipment. These dummies often wound up in people's farms. Not only did the USAF not cover this up, they encouraged people to report the location of these dummies, and even paid rewards for them. No coverup here. This is all documented.
• The alleged bits of alien spacecraft scattered over the landscape - The oft-repeated refrain from the tinfoil hat brigade is that the government claimed that this was a weather balloon. This term is a misnomer, and was never used by the USAF. This term was invented later. At the time of the alleged crash, the USAF had just started Project Mogul, which involved the launching of several high altitude balloons for various scientific experiments, including the effect of cosmic rays on living tissue samples. In fact, the very first such balloon crashed at about the time that the supposed alien ship crash happened. Once again, this is all well-documented, including the locations where these dummies we retrieved.
• The living alien at the hospital - Many accounts of the incident involve an actual living alien being escorted by USAF personnel. The figure is discribed as having the characteric large head of other supposed accounts of aliens. This is yet another case of an unrelated event being tied to Roswell. In 1959, a Captain Dan Fulgham received a nasty head injury that caused a massive hematoma. As a result, his face and head swelled to grotesque proportions. Even his own wife didn't recognize him at first. Documented. No coverup.

Ok, this post is long enough. There are lots of other little factoids from the case (the so-called "Missing Nurse", the alleged "red-headed captain" that threatened people if the said anything, etc) that I could go into, but all of these facts can be found with a little investigation.

But I can predict the responses now: "The government planted those other stories to throw us off the trail!" "They're feeding disinformation to us.!" Bull-fucking-shit. Check your history, people. The US government sucks at covering up anything of importance. Anything that remains classified now from that long ago, it's largely because no one considers the information important.

Finally, here's another one for you: You say we recovered advanced alien tech. You say we recovered alien bodies. Then tell me: Where the hell is this technology? 56 years is a hell of a long time. We've gone from vaccuum-tube ENIAC that fills a room to a 2.6 gigahertz PC that sits in your lap. If we can't in that space of time figure out what made any alleged UFO from Roswell tick in that space of time, then either it never happened, or the government scientists are all idiots. And don't claim that things like stealth tech resulted from alien technology. Give humanity credit for be

Re:you skeptics amaze me...

[stwrtpj]

Then, the Air Force said the *alien bodies* were actually dummies used in testing human conditions at high altitudes (ie. ejecting at high altitudes), yet the tests didn't start for 5 plus years AFTER the *Roswell Incident.*

And the first tinfoil hat conspiracy theories did not come up until years after this

Read my rant titled "Put your tinfoil hats away, please", and educate yourself.

He was asked what was inside the infamous hanger, and he said never to ask that question to him again.

OMG, yes!! Wow!! Thanks for reminding me of that! Yes, wow, that one statement conveys sooooooooooooo much. I'm so, like, totally enlightened now! Of course, when someone answers a question like this, it certainly MUST be code for "There's an alien spacecraft in there, but you didn't hear that from me."

Dude, do you think that just MAYBE his response REALLY meant: "I've been ask that same assinine question before by every single UFO nut out there, and I'm goddamn fucking tired of it."

Re:Of course it won't...

[sebi]

If these declassified documents are truly complete, there HAS to be a reason they were classified in the first place.

Maybe the fact that Roswell, according to the article, was "home to the only atomic bomber unit (at Roswell Army Airfield) in the world" had something to do with it. We are talking 1947 here. The war has ended two years ago and the fight against commies is on. Could it be that all documents from that base were automatically kept secret? Were you able to look at the records from the 3rd of July 1947 before now? What about the 5th?