The truth is out there? The U.S. Air Force released this 1972 photo of a Viking space probe as part of its report on the so called 'Roswell Incident' of 1947
Lt. Col. Richard French, who served in the military for more than 27 years, was in Alamagordo, New Mexico, in 1947, when an unusual object fell from the sky and crashed to the ground in Roswell.
Military authorities issued a press release after the shocking incident, saying: 'The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc.'
Contentious: Former Air Force Col. Richard French says he was an official UFO debunker and there were two, not one, Roswell UFO crashes
Shockingly, the media and the public accepted the explanation without question. Since then, conspiracy theorists and officials such as French have called into question the military's line on the incident.
'There were actually two crashes at Roswell, which most people don't know,' French told The Huffington Post.
'The first one was shot down by an experimental U.S. airplane that was flying out of White Sands, New Mexico, and it shot what was effectively an electronic pulse-type weapon that disabled and took away all the controls of the UFO, and that's why it crashed.
'When they hit it with that electromagnetic pulse - bingo! There goes all their electronics and, consequently, the UFO was uncontrollable.'
French, who claims he was ordered to debunk UFO sightings, said a confidential source in the military told him about the shooting down of the so-called alien spacecraft and added that there was a second crash near Roswell just days later.
'It was within a few miles of where the original crash was,' French told HuffPo. 'We think that the reason they were in there at that time was to try and recover parts and any survivors of the first crash. I'm [referring to] the people from outer space - the guys whose UFO it was.'
But other experts have rejected French's claims. 'No chance! Zero chance,' Army Col. John Alexander, tasked with investigating UFO sightings, told the website.
Theory: Lt. Col. Richard French, who served in the military for more than 27 years, claims there were two UFO-related crashes in Roswell
But refutations have not stopped others from coming forward and contesting the military's official line.
Chase Brandon, an agent who served 25 years with the CIA, recently claimed that information relating to the crash had been concealed in a hidden vault within the agency's Langley headquarters.
'It was not a weather balloon - it was what people first reported,' he said. 'It was a craft that did not come from this planet.'
Now all we have to do is start reporting the actual correct number of crashes in New Mexico that spring and summer, which is closer to five or six, as far as I can tell.
There is a guy in that area who was interviewed by Kerry Cassidy not too long ago who had them all listed out on a big map. He's been working for years to sort out all the stories and set the record straight.