"...It was not an object, it was a craft."
A pilot: witness Chicago O'Hare case.
You know, were not all idiots.

When the last data is retrieved and all the history collected, argued, debated and the last measure-ment has been made, the Roswell ET crash end the truth of what happened will for me be integrity and the risks taken by the original witnesses.

Who gained the most in hiding the truth:

-The witness which supported the crashed spaceship story at Roswell and were told to shut up or else?

-Major Marcel a man who had guarded the security of the atomic bomb, a man who went along with the spin even though it made him look like a idiot for thirty years?

-A rancher who later was marched around after the incident by armed guards?

-Or the top military Command Officers who even after successfully destroying the "Flying Disk" report with the spin in the press (no follow-up stories), still acted as if a flying disk had crashed?

There was NO "fanfare" in the beginning of Roswell lets get that straight right now, it was just people explaining what happened to them, people who had nothing to gain at the time and most of all people who were not idiots. When a person gives testimony on a subject as controversial as spaceships and when that testimony is reported freely with no exchange of money both then and now, then brother and sister you have my attention.

Maybe I am a fool but when people come forward like that then I say "no thank you debunker " I will decide for myself, who is the liar. I can not count the number of times I have turned on the news and heard downright lies disguised as truth on many important issues just because the media refused to give time and thought to the details.

The only group who gave the Roswell witnesses any attention, before the military were the UFO researchers. For their own purposes of course. The argument that the witnesses used common terms to describe the crash fragments (balsa wood, tin foil among others) just reinforces their honesty for me. Yes of course the witness that handled the material used the terms they were familiar with, they were not trying to embellish on either side - that was a no brainier.

It's is now going on sixty years, and the debunkers have made the Roswell witnesses out to be idiots. I guess only the debunkers are smart enough to distinguish between common paper back tin foil like inside a cigarette pack and balsa wood from strange materials that behaved like no others in the world. Most of them are dead and were old at the time they were interviewed but I believe the last memories to go are the most amazing ones you have.

Many of these same witnesses directly experienced, or were threatened with retaliation from military and civilian authorities - including unlawful incarceration, assassination outright, or the ever-popular 'how would you feel if I told you your entire family could be made to disappear'.

These witnesses first recounted their experience in a very different world - a world in which media, military, and authority were in a much less sophisticated relationship. They were clueless, those early Roswell witnesses, when it came to the legacy of ridicule, controversy, and global media fame that Roswell has become.

Some witnesses spoke to researchers because, decades later, they were angry at being treated harshly by the military and warned not to speak about what they experienced. "This is a free country" was one remark made by a prominent witness.

Balsa wood - Tin Foil?

The Roswell experience first went public when Major Jesse Marcel called a radio program on UFOs and "blurted it out". The station manager was a HAM radio operator and knew Marcel, also a HAM operator. Stanton Friedman eventually met that station manager, and the rest is history.

Mr. Friedman knows how to get close to people. He is intelligent, articulate and can be downright funny. One of the most objective guys I know - objective to the point of when recounting once to me that Phillip Klass (the infamous, late, professional UFO debunker) was a good conversationalist when they stayed off the subject of UFOs. I wonder how Stanton feels now that it's come to light how Klass had written to the Canadian government and told them to keep an official eye on Stanton Friedman, identifying the researcher and soon-to-be Canadian resident as a trouble maker who would accuse the government of hiding secrets on UFOs:

Let me tell you, Phil Klass was a weird guy. Mr. No Klass secretly taped confidential conversations with at least one close friend and fellow skeptic and lost that friendship because of it.
"Don't follow leaders, watch your parking meters."
Bob Dylan
That fortunate accident of fellow HAM radio buffs hooking up over a UFO discussion broadcast notwithstanding, it was the Roswell Witnesses who made the story.

Again and again they would tell how the material was amazing. They would try and cut it and couldn't. When they would crumple it, SNAP! the miracle metal would return to its shape, unmarked. Another witness hit the "balsa wood" with a sledgehammer. Result: the famous featherweight beams would not break.

These are simple things that anyone would do to prove it to themselves these artifacts were special.

Isn't it amazing how the military and civilian authorities managing the media spin could write it off as balsa wood and paperbacked tin foil... and both the mainstream media, the press, and thinkers on both side of the political spectrum accept it without one question?

How can we believe the commander of the base and the intelligence officer mistook a PROJECT MOGUL balloon for a flying saucer?

You say they didn't know about MOGUL? Not true! The engineers from PROJECT MOGUL had already been in touch with Roswell base, and solicited them to retrieve their escaped balloons! But the MOGUL group were told to pick them up themselves, because the US Air Force had better things to do. Photos of the MOGUL balloon were in the papers on July 10, same month as Roswell. Clearly, MOGUL balloons had nothing to do with the flying saucers. The concurrent coverage was just an accident.

So what's the big deal? The Debunkers claim MOGUL was classified.

Wrong. Today we know that the only part of MOGUL that was classified was its mission, not the constituent materials of the big, well-known balloons. Everyone knew about weather balloons. Notably, the balloon that was sent aloft that day had no radar detectors on it - thus demolishing the claim to TOP SECRET status advanced by those original military media spinners who dreamt up the balloon cover story. Now I suggest for those of you who like your revenge served cold on MOGUL to go the virtually strange link.

Wonder how many of you out there have built models using balsa wood? I have, in the Fifties. Balsa wood is different I don't remember anything to compare to it. So in a way I can understand why this very light material reminded the Roswell witnesses of the almost feather light balsa. I have never in my life mistaken Balsa wood for anything but balsa wood, but then, I have never handled fragments of a flying saucer.