roswell weather balloon
Roswell weather balloon
That may sound like a strange - even bizarre - question to ask. But, stay with me. There's absolutely no doubt that something very strange happened on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in the summer of 1947. There is intriguing witness testimony which supports the idea that people were warned not to talk about what they knew - as in ever. There were, allegedly, death threats made too. Tales even exist of people being murdered to prevent the truth of Roswell from surfacing outside of the secret world of government. But, that was then - seventy years ago. What about now? That's the important question. It's a question which gets to the heart of the title of this article.

Whenever elements of the U.S. Government, such as the GAO (the Government Accountability Office) or the Air Force have anything to say about Roswell, Ufologists typically scream "Lies!" "Disinformation!" I saw this, and still remember it, when back in the 1990s the Air Force published its reports on Roswell. One surfaced in 1994 and was soon followed by a massive report in excess of 1,000 pages in length. The Air Force concluded that, most likely, what came down on the Foster Ranch was a huge "Mogul" balloon array, designed to monitor for early Soviet atomic bomb tests. Then, in July 1997 - which was the 50th anniversary of Roswell - the Air Force published another report on Roswell. This one was on the controversial matter of the bodies found at Roswell - which the Air Force suggested were probably crash-test dummies. Ufology was in a state of uproar, pointing figures at what it considered to be a bunch of liars. But, those same ufologists were wrong.

I don't think that a Mogul balloon came down on the ranch - at all. Nor do I think that the bodies were mere dummies. But, I don't think the government/Air Force lied. I think they genuinely went looking for answers, but couldn't find anything solid, and - as a result - came up with what they truly considered to be a viable answer. Or answers. I am of the opinion that when, in the 1990s, the Air Force and the GAO came out with their reports on Roswell, they had less answers than did Ufology.

Within Ufology there is an (almost required) assumption that if what the government states about UFOs doesn't accord with what Ufology wants to hear, then it must be a lie. Not so. A careful and close read of the combined Roswell reports of the USAF and the GAO makes it very clear that officialdom's theories were simply that: theories. The Air Force openly admitted there was no definitive proof that dummies or Mogul balloons were the cause of all the fuss. The Air Force admitted that crash-test dummies were not used in the area until the early 1950s. Their theory was that the witnesses to the dummies got the years wrong, confusing the fifties with 1947. The Air Force also admitted that while it found thousands of pages of documents on Mogul - and in numerous military archives - not a single such document confirmed that it was a Mogul balloon that came down in Lincoln County.

In my view, if the USAF was lying, we would have seen a far more robust, well-constructed cover-story that addressed every avenue and plugged every hole. But, the reports do not do that. Instead, they show that the USAF tried to come up with what they thought were probably the answers, but couldn't prove it. Then, there's the matter of one of the key military/intelligence figures in Roswell: Sheridan Cavitt. Certainly someone who knew exactly what happened at Roswell, he took the truth to the grave with him. When, in the early 1990s, the Air Force was busily trying to figure out what the hell happened at Roswell, Cavitt was still alive. The Air Force contacted him and plans were made for a face-to-face interview. It happened in May 1994, in Cavitt's own home.

Read the rest here.

Nick Redfern works full time as a writer, lecturer, and journalist. He writes about a wide range of unsolved mysteries, including Bigfoot, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, alien encounters, and government conspiracies. Nick has written 41 books, writes for Mysterious Universe and has appeared on numerous television shows on the The History Channel, National Geographic Channel and SyFy Channel.