05x04 - The Roswell UFO Incident

[bunniefuu]

-[camera whirring]
-[menacing music playing]

[beeping]

-[man 1] Speed.
-[man 2] Camera.

[man 1] Marker.

[clapperboard claps]

[man 3] And set.

[man 4] Action.

This air force base
here in Roswell, New Mexico

was the center of a controversy
back in 1947,

that, over 40 years later,
still remains unsolved.

[tense music playing]

[man 1] In September of 1989,

Unsolved Mysteries opened the door.

This was the very first network show

that presented Roswell
as a historic event,

that it was something
that was clearly being covered up.

Here we are now, decades later,
and it's still as big.

President Clinton said he did go right in,
and he did check, and there was nothing.

Well, you know,
that's what we're instructed to say.

[laughter]

There has to be documentation.
It has to be somewhere.

It's just we haven't found it.

[man 1] Roswell is something unique.

The chance of an actual craft.

The chance of remains.

It takes you down
all these different avenues

of potential evidence
that are unlike any other UFO story.

[man 2] That's what drives me.

It was an incredible story
I wanted to tell.

And I haven't been able
to tell the end of it.

And that's what I would like to do,
is tell the end of it.

[opening theme music playing]

[music fades]

[intriguing music playing]

[man 1] We refer to Roswell
as the ultimate cold-case file.

It's the one case that could solve
the entire UFO mystery overnight.

[man 2] Other s... uh, sightings
in other countries,

"This is Brazil's Roswell.
This is the European Roswell."

"This is the Russian Roswell."
So everything focuses back to Roswell.

[thunder rumbling]

[Schmitt] Roswell is
the granddaddy of them all.

Well, this is it. This is what
the witnesses always described to us.

Kevin Randle and I have been
investigating this phenomenon

for a good part of the last 40 years.

[Randle] If we can prove
what happened here,

if we can prove
it was an alien spacecraft,

this changes the whole dynamic...

-Everything.
-...of society.

[music fades]

-[thunder claps]
-[tense music playing]

[Schmitt] The late evening
of July 2nd in 1947,

there was a severe lightning storm

that came off
of the Capitan Mountains in New Mexico.

Ranchers described
that between the thunderclaps,

they heard what sounded like an expl*si*n.

[dramatic music sting]

[music fades]

[Schmitt] Next morning, a ranch foreman
by the name of W.W. Brazel

discovers a debris field.

[ethereal music playing]

[Schmitt] There were sheets
of foil-like, metal-like material.

Super light, but super strong.

[unsettling music playing]

So that Sunday, July 6th,

he gathered up some boxes
of this material...

loaded it up
into the back of his pickup truck...

made the 75-mile drive here into Roswell,

and then at Roswell,

you had the headquarters
of the 509th b*mb Group,

the first atomic-b*mb squadron
in the world at that time.

The very b*mb squadron

that had dropped the two A-bombs
over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And it's Major Jesse Marcel,
the head of intelligence at the base,

who would then retrieve
a box of the wreckage

from the rancher Mack Brazel

and take it back to his boss.

And it was at noon, Tuesday, July 8th,
that the Roswell Army Airfield

issued that famous press release

where they actually stated
they'd captured a flying saucer.

Once the announcement
hit the wire services,

news got out all around the world.

Throughout Europe,
even as far away as Australia.

[Morse code beeping]

[man] Headline Edition, July 8th, 1947.

The Army Air Forces has announced
that a flying disc has been found

and is now in the possession of the army.

[tense music playing]

[Schmitt] Major Marcel
is ordered onto a B-29 b*mber,

and he flies with some of the wreckage
to Brigadier General Roger Ramey,

head of the 8th Air Force
in Fort Worth, Texas.

He takes it to General Ramey's office.

Ramey takes him to a map room.

When they return,

Marcel is shocked
to see the wreckage is now gone...

and in its place is a clump
of rotting neoprene rubber balloon

and a shredded radar-reflector kite.

And Major Marcel is then ordered by Ramey

to pose holding up sheets
of the foil kite.

Marcel is also ordered by General Ramey
not to say a word to any of the reporters,

not to even say a word to his wife
once he got home.

The media in Roswell were threatened
with the loss of their licenses

within 24 hours

if they didn't stop
the flying-saucer story.

[indistinct radio broadcast]

[Schmitt] And so the evolution
of the flying-saucer story

into the weather balloon would begin.

[Randle] By the time
the next morning came around,

the story was basically dead,
and from that point on,

for literally decades,
there were few mentions of Roswell

suggesting it was anything
other than a weather balloon.

[intriguing music playing]

After the balloon press conference
in General Ramey's office,

Major Marcel was kept overnight
in Fort Worth.

As things quieted down,
he realized he was the fall guy.

He was the patsy in all this.

He's ordered to pose
with the substituted balloon,

and fully aware of the fact
that it's not what he recovered,

not what he brought
to General Ramey's office.

But he kept that a secret

and would retire within a couple of years
after the incident.

He returned back home to Houma, Louisiana,

and he went into television repair.

[music fades]

[woman] In 1947,

when my grandfather was told
not to talk about it, he took it to heart.

That's his job.
That's what he's gonna do. He's a...

You know, he's a military officer,

and, "By gosh, if you don't want me
to talk about it,

I'm not gonna talk about it."

[intriguing music playing]

[Denice] But, at a certain point,

after so many years go by,

he just couldn't understand
why the truth wasn't coming out.

It ate him up inside.

I think it was
'cause he wanted to talk about it.

He wanted to get it out there.

He believed in it,
but yet he was forced into this corner.

And my grandfather decided
he was not going to die with the story.

[Schmitt] Thirty years after the incident,

Major Jesse Marcel Senior
was diagnosed with terminal emphysema.

At this point, Marcel had nothing to lose.
He was dying.

"What's the government
gonna do to me now?"

And so he decided to tell the truth.

[Marcel] I knew that I had never seen
anything like that before,

and as of now, I don't know what it was.

[unsettling music playing]

[Schmitt] Marcel shared
details of his experience

in the TV series In Search Of...,

in an episode
which was one of the earliest efforts

to uncover the buried history of Roswell.

It was not anything from this earth.
That I'm quite sure of.

You couldn't even bend it.
You couldn't dent it.

Even with a sledgehammer,
would bounce off of it.

Being an intelligence officer, I was
familiar with just about all materials

used in aircraft and in our air travel.

This was nothing like that.

It could not have... It could not have been.

They took pictures, of course.

They had a whole flock
of microphones there.

They wanted me to...
They wanted some comments from me,

but I wasn't at liberty to do that.

So all I could do is keep my mouth shut.

And General Ramey is the one
who told the newsmen what it was

and to forget about it.

It was nothing more
than a weather-observation balloon.

Of course, we both knew differently.

[Randle] When we learned
about Jesse Marcel

talking about picking up
pieces of a flying saucer,

that sparked our whole investigation.

We started our research
looking for corroboration of the story.

"Let's see what we really have
in the way of evidence."

[siren blares]

[dramatic music sting plays]

[man] Flying saucers
have invaded our planet.

[Randle] I always blame my mother
for my interest in UFOs.

She was a science-fiction fan,

and she took me to a movie in 1956,

to Earth vs. The Flying Saucers,
and that kind of got me interested.

[intriguing music playing]

[Randle] I spent several years as
an intelligence officer in the air force,

was deployed to Iraq
as an army intelligence officer,

and eventually retired
as lieutenant colonel

from the Iowa National Guard.

In the 1970s, I published several articles
about UFO sightings,

including those with physical evidence
and some sort of photographic proof.

When I met up with Don Schmitt,

he had an extensive background
in UFO research.

He had worked with Allen Hynek.

Dr. Hynek,
who was the air force consultant

to Project Blue Book,
their investigation of UFOs at the time.

And I thought
I would be a good partner for Don

simply because of my military background.

I would understand
the... the protocols of the military

better than a civilian would,

and I might relate a little bit better
to them.

They might be more,
uh... open to talking to me

than someone
who did not have a military background.

So he invited me down
to... to Roswell with him,

and we made our first investigation
in 1989.

You remember when they photographed us
running into the arroyo, yeah?

[Randle] Because it was
such an exciting thing to be there.

I became interested
in the very subject of UFOs

back in high school.

I was just captivated.

Just the very concept of being visited
by an intelligence off the planet.

[ethereal music playing]

Kevin and I, we have written
a number of books investigating UFOs.

One of the things
that I really enjoy about the subject

is not only chasing this elusive phantom,

but trying to solve the ultimate mystery
of what happened in Roswell

because the story is that big.

When we first started
investigating Roswell, February of 1989,

Kevin and I were complete skeptics.

We both knew
next to nothing about Roswell.

[Randle] Don and I came with the attitude
that we'd spend a couple of days down

and get to the bottom of it,
and that would be the end of it.

-We were wrong.
-[unsettling music sting plays]

-The military came, appeared over there.
-Yeah.

[Randle] It was something that deserved
our full attention

in an investigative capacity.

One of the problems we had was, um...
we were dealing with witnesses from 1947

who were... getting very old.

We got word of it
with the rancher himself.

He was glad to do the government
a favor of bringing the pieces.

[Randle] Marcel had since passed away.

And so we realized we had kind of a race
with the undertaker on that respect.

We had to get to the witnesses
while they were still alive

and we could talk to them about
what they had seen and what they had done.

[tense music playing]

[Schmitt] Early on, we met with the late
Doctor Colonel Jesse Marcel Junior,

the lone son of Jesse Marcel Senior.

-[man] Why did he wake you up?
-He had something he wanted to show us.

This apparently was some debris
or something he brought in from the field.

[ethereal music playing]

Look at this writing.

What do you think that is?

[Randle] Jesse Marcel Junior found a thing
that he called an I-beam,

eight to ten inches long,

and maybe a half an inch wide
at the widest part.

And there was some purple symbology on it.

It was sort of embossed on there.

The most unusual part of this whole thing
was what was on the I-beam,

on the inner surface of the I-beam.

There appeared to be a type of writing.

Definitely a purplish-violet hue.

I don't recall seeing
any lines or letters of any kind,

but it was more like geometric shapes.

[man] Is it possible
you might have mistaken it

for Russian, Japanese, any other...

-No.
-[man] ...language?

No. No way.

[Jesse] My grandfather said, "I think
you're the first person to ever see

a writing from an extraterrestrial being
of some kind."

This is pretty representative
of what they found.

It was silver in color.

Even the color of the symbols
were a light violet like this,

and these symbols are based

on my grandfather's
and father's descriptions.

[mysterious music playing]

You remember back when we were,

I think, somewhere around
eight and nine years old?

And Dad would talk about,
you know, life in the universe and how...

[Randle] Jesse Marcel III
and Denice Marcel

were important in the beginning

because they helped us
understand their grandfather.

[Jesse] When my grandfather and father,

when they were relaying these stories,
it was life altering.

They, at the very least,
absolutely believed in it.

[Marcel Jr.] We would talk privately
among ourselves

about what this thing was.

We came to the conclusion
it was not of earthly origin.

If I had not actually
held pieces of it in my hand,

I would not think
that it would be possible.

But because I happened to see this,
that's the only reason I believe it.

[Jesse] My grandfather
broke every rule in the book

to go home and show his son
what he'd found.

And because he was willing
to break all those rules,

ones that he was steadfast in belief of,

I mean, lived his life by,

that little piece of information
makes me believe it more than anything.

That he was willing to...
could've destroyed his career.

They could've done anything to him.

But he took that chance
just to show his... show his son.

He felt this was something very unusual.

He felt it was probably something
we'd never seen before or ever see again.

[Denice] When my father started
talking about the Roswell incident,

his story stayed completely the same
from the beginning to the end.

He never changed anything.

Eleven years old, but he remembers.

I remember that very well
in spite of being 11 'cause it was such a...

[Denice] I do believe, however,
my grandfather took secrets to his grave

about the Roswell incident

because he always said,

"There's a lot more to the story,
but I just can't talk about it."

[unsettling music playing]

[Schmitt] When Jesse Marcel Senior
finally broke rank,

more and more witnesses
that had been sworn to secrecy

started coming forward
with their stories about Roswell.

[man] There's no doubt in your mind,
I gather,

that the balloon story was a cover story.

Absolutely none.
We knew that it was a cover story.

[Randle] General Thomas DuBose,
chief of staff

to Brigadier General Roger Ramey
in Fort Worth,

confirmed that the weather-balloon story
was a cover-up.

But we used that in order to assuage

the curiosity of the press because...

[Randle] People were very careful
about what they said,

and I think a lot of the times,
people had... didn't know who to tell,

and they didn't think they'd be believed,
so they didn't talk about it.

And once we began asking questions
and they realized

that there were people
who would believe their stories,

they shared what they knew with us.

Bill Brazel was the son of Mack Brazel,

who was the man who discovered
the debris field.

Bill Brazel found
pieces of the debris himself.

[man] It was not a weather balloon.

It was something... altogether different.

[unsettling music playing]

[man] My friends was asking me
if I'd found any more

or anything like this,

and I said,
"Well, I picked up a few scraps."

"Uh, about a cigar box full."

And, uh, somebody, I don't know,

must've informed the air force

because, first thing I know,
I have visitors.

But we were just scraping
the tip of the iceberg at that time.

[opening theme music playing]

When we first heard
of the incident at Roswell,

we assumed
it was just another UFO sighting

that could be easily explained.

[Randle] About a year
into the investigation

when we did the Unsolved Mysteries sh**t
here in Roswell,

that changed it
into kind of a national phenomenon.

And more and more people
started coming forward.

There was a flying saucer.

Some type of craft from outer space.

No qualms about what it was.

A gray, lustrous metal.

I actually saw that piece of I-beam.

It was just as hard as could be
and as light as a feather.

"Don't say anything, George."

"And if you do, you'll die,
and so will Inez and the children."

"And don't you say another word."

This is a real and true story.

[Schmitt] Their stories were consistent,

both the military and the civilian.

[Schmitt] And, after all these years,
they wanted to tell the truth.

It must've been Captain Henderson.

[Schmitt] To date, we have interviewed
over 600 witnesses

either directly or indirectly involved
with the Roswell incident of 1947.

Like one of the witnesses told us,

"First thing I think of in the morning,
last thing I think of every night."

It doesn't get any easier.

'Cause every time
that I tell somebody about it,

I feel like I'm 12 years old again.

[bell ringing]

[Randle] Frankie Rowe, uh,
was the daughter of a firefighter

in Roswell in 1947.

There had been reports
of emergency personnel in the area

who'd recovered debris,

and Frankie told us that a state trooper
brought some of it to the fire department,

and she actually handled
some of the debris.

In an emotional documentary decades later,

a dramatic interview elicited from Frankie

the fear and trauma
she felt as a young girl.

Car came driving up the driveway,
and we had a pretty long driveway.

It was a military car.

He had mentioned at first
that he wanted to see

the one who had seen the piece of material
that they... had been handling

down at the station and...

[brooding music playing]

...I said, "Yes, I did handle it."

Then he started emphasizing,
"No, you didn't."

He didn't just come out and say,

"This is not something
you're gonna be allowed to talk about."

He was trying to get it through my head
that... that I never saw it.

And he got louder.

He said,
"There are things that we can do."

"We can take you out here
in the middle of this desert."

He said, "No one will ever find
your bodies, ever."

"No one will ever know
what happened to you."

And I never discussed it again.

The government has never acknowledged
any extraordinary debris at Roswell.

Yet one of the things that we learned
was that, back in 1947,

the military went into high gear
with a full recovery operation.

They immediately cordon off the area,
cordon off the roads,

and then arrange for troops to go out

and actually recover from the debris field

every last piece of physical evidence.

[man] My dad, Colonel Pat Saunders,

was second-in-command
under Colonel Blanchard

at the Roswell air force base.

When the crash occurred,

he was most responsible
for assigning troops to the cleanup

and how they were gonna proceed

with keeping the... the secret
after the fact.

Colonel Patrick Saunders
observed firsthand the level of security,

the level of manpower,
that were part of the recovery operation.

And the fact that enlisted men,
non-officers,

were sworn to secrecy.

[music swells and fades]

When we contacted your father,
he was often very reluctant to talk to us.

He made jokes about the little green men
or the men from Mars, that sort of thing.

There was always something about it,
that we knew he knew more.

[Tim] My dad was very aware
of those threats that

were made to anyone involved,

and even civilians.

And he... he knew
that some would be carried out.

[tense music playing]

[Randle] The effort expended
to recover the material

does not make any sense.

If it was just a weather balloon,

why was there the need
for the security in the first place?

From that point on,

the evolution of the case is very complex.

[music fades]

The debris field was just metallic debris.

So there had been a search
for an impact site

where the craft itself
supposedly came down.

[Schmitt] Witnesses told us
that, back in 1947,

a team of archaeologists
from Western Texas Tech

came upon this pod,

this egg-shaped craft
about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

[tense music playing]

So this particular site
is separated by about 27 miles

going east-southeast
from the debris field.

We believe this was
the final impact point.

And then we learned
they discovered bodies.

-[music ends abruptly]
-And they were not human.

[menacing music playing]

When you start talking about
some kind of a craft and bodies,

well, then you've elevated
the level of importance.

The government has wreckage
and alien bodies?

Alien bodies, yes.

-You say that so seriously and...
-It's because it's absolutely true.

When we look at the body stories,

there were some very good people
who we talked to that are very credible.

They all went out
into the desert in his truck,

where a crashed saucer had come down.

Beverly Bean was the daughter
of Sergeant Melvin Brown

who was pulled from his squadron

to be a security guard
out at the crash site.

[Bean] Him and this guy
couldn't understand

why they had these trucks
with some sort of ice in them.

But whatever they had in there,
they wanted to keep cold.

And they were told not to look inside.

But, naturally, you know,
somebody tells you not to look, you know,

nine times out of ten, you're gonna look!

So him and this other guy lifted up
this tarpaulin or something,

these covers that were inside the truck,
and they saw these two bodies.

He said they were smaller than us,

um, no more than over four foot tall.

Much larger heads than we have.

And slanted eyes.

[music fades]

Shortly after we got involved in the case,

we came across
the first stories about bodies,

and I think they have been proved
from that point,

there's credible evidence
that there were bodies.

[unsettling music playing]

[Randle] Pappy Henderson
was one of the pilots

for the First Air Transport Unit,

and, according to, um, Sappho Henderson,
his wife,

Pappy was one of the pilots
that flew bodies out of Roswell.

[Schmitt] The final destination
was Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

in Dayton, Ohio,

where the craft and bodies
would be tested and analyzed.

[unsettling music playing]

[woman] My husband told me
the bodies were small,

the heads were larger,

and the eyes were rather sunken
and a little slanted.

They were strange.

They were not... not of this earth.

When my husband, who was a man of truth,

who was, uh, trusted
with 29 different army aircraft planes,

first pilot, aircraft commander,

tells me this story, I believed him.

[Tim] My father, Colonel Pat Saunders,
retired in 1970,

and for the longest time,
he never told anyone anything.

But at some point,

he just felt like
he had to tell the truth to someone, um...

and he just chose to tell to me.

[intriguing music playing]

[Tim] He didn't say a lot.

He really simply said,

"We're not alone in the universe.
We found bodies."

When my dad told me that,
my jaw kinda dropped.

I was shocked
that he actually finally admitted it.

[Schmitt] I had originally failed
in my efforts

to get Patrick Saunders
to speak candidly about the incident.

But later on,
he began to tell family and friends

about what happened.

[Schmitt] We were to learn
through the family,

and specifically his son Tim,

that his father
had left a deathbed confession

in a most unique form,

in that of buying up copies
of our paperback edition

of our second book,

and then writing that notation
on the inner leaflet.

[Randle] It said, "This is the truth,
and I never told anybody anything,"

and signed his name, Pat Saunders.

Here's a statement where the flyleaf
talks about damage control,

talks about what they did
to cover the thing up,

and here's one of the primary sources

explaining what we wrote
in the book is true.

[Tim] I think
it is the most damning document

because it really spelled out exactly,

in detail, what my dad had done

and what his role was in the cover-up,

and that they found bodies.

[pensive music playing]

-So we're now in Hangar P3.
-P3.

[Randle] Now known as 84.

It's one of the last structures
on the base that was here in 1947.

[Schmitt] At the base hangar,
witnesses told us

boxes of the wreckage,

along with the crate
containing a number of the bodies,

were loaded into waiting aircraft
and then shipped out.

[Randle] Based on testimonies
of the witnesses,

this is probably the room
where they kept the bodies.

[door creaks]

-It's a perfect locker. That it is, with...
-[Randle] Yeah.

[Schmitt] ...you know,
frosted windows and a single door.

[Randle] It's sealed off now,
but in 1947, it was open.

You could move the bodies
from this secure location...

-Right, right.
-...right to the airplane.

Precisely.

[Randle] They could've taxied
from this point and taken off.

They could've been off the base in five
minutes once they got the thing loaded.

[music swells and fades]

[mysterious music playing]

[man] Congressman Schiff, what got you
interested in this subject, per se?

I started receiving letters
a little over two years ago

from constituents stating
that they believe the government

was covering up what happened at Roswell.

[Schmitt] Congressman Steven Schiff
of New Mexico

represented a good number
of the actual witnesses.

In 1994, he would spearhead the effort
by members of Congress,

demanding to see the Roswell files.

[distant siren wailing]

[woman] And now this from the Pentagon.

The air force has issued a 231-page report
on what's become known

as the incident at Roswell.

But the report seems to raise
just as many questions

as it tries to answer.

[man] I was an air force
Office of Special Investigation agent,

and I dealt with issues having to do
with all kind of investigating matters,

from criminal to otherwise.

I had almost nothing to do with,
uh... with UFOs

until I was assigned
to the Roswell incident.

But I remember watching
Unsolved Mysteries about Roswell

because I was
a great big Robert Stack fan.

And I remember when the show came on,
it got my attention.

Tonight,
a special Unsolved Mysteries report,

mysteries of alien beings.

If Robert Stack said it,
it's gotta be true.

Would a guy in a trench coat
with that kind of voice lie to you?

[intriguing music playing]

[Weaver] In 1994, our job was to find out
what did or did not happen at Roswell.

But in order to do that,

we had to review
literally millions of records

and miles of microfilm.

And I really kinda wanted
there to be something there.

But there was... there was almost nothing
in any air-force records about Roswell.

And then we found out about Project Mogul,

which was taking place
in New Mexico at that time.

[man] Begun in 1946,

Project Mogul was a top-secret attempt

to acoustically detect
suspected Soviet nuclear explosions

and ballistic-m*ssile launches.

Mogul used an odd assortment
of naval acoustical sensors,

radar reflecting targets, nylon fibers,

and other equipment carried aloft
by a train of weather balloons

extending over 600 feet.

[Weaver] Project Mogul explained
a lot of things

for this whole Roswell incident,

including the descriptions
by some witnesses

of what the material
found at Roswell looked like.

And so our conclusion was

a Project Mogul balloon crashed in Roswell

and that Project Mogul

was the best scientific
and logical explanation

for what happened
in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

Did we say that was definitive? No.

The air force now says
it wasn't a weather balloon after all,

but a top secret balloon
to spy on the Soviets.

That would appear to explain
all the Pentagon secrecy, right?

Wrong.

[Randle] When the report came out,
I wasn't surprised at all.

I knew exactly what they were gonna do.
They weren't gonna admit anything.

[Schmitt] We had considered Mogul
very early on in our own investigation,

and we could easily disqualify it
as a potential explanation to Roswell.

We were told it was a top-secret project.

We were told, it was, uh...
classified material being used.

But when we get down to it,
we realized the purpose was classified,

but the balloon itself was not.

The Mogul equipment
was off-the-shelf weather balloons,

off-the-shelf radar targets.

In fact, early on,

the people at Alamogordo Army Airfield,
where they were launching the balloons,

made a trip to Roswell Army Airfield
to enlist their aid

in recovering one of the balloons
that crashed east of Roswell.

So the Roswell Army Airfield
knew what was going on.

They knew what the balloons were.

There was no reason
for Jesse Marcel Senior

not to be able to recognize it.

[Schmitt] They were launching
these Project Mogul balloons

on a regular basis.

The air-force report
would attribute Roswell

to Flight Number 4.

[intriguing music playing]

[Randle] The culprit they point to is
the June 4th, 1947 launch from Alamogordo.

But the problem is

all the documentation suggests
Flight Number 4 never flew.

The flight was canceled

because they could not launch them
in cloudy weather.

And if the flight was canceled,

well, it couldn't have left the debris.

One thing is clear,
everybody agrees something fell,

but what was it?

[thunder rumbles]

I, uh, respect Colonel Weaver
as a military officer.

I think he's an honest man.

I think he was given a job to do,
and he did the job he was given to do.

We just disagree
on where some of the evidence takes us.

They followed the trail to Project Mogul
because here was an explanation

that gets it out of the hair
of the air force

and it proves it was something mundane.

But the government does not offer
any evidence that what they found

was in fact a Project Mogul balloon.

They just suggest it,
but there is no evidence for it.

[Weaver] This was a good-faith attempt

to really look at Roswell in depth

as... as much as it's been criticized
since that time.

We ruled out
all the other things that made sense.

Airplane crashes
and nuclear accidents and m*ssile launches

and all the other things
that we delved into,

including the fact that, "Could this be
something from outer space?"

And there absolutely is no record
of anything the air force has

to indicate that was the case either,
so it was ruled out.

[eerie music playing]

[Schmitt] The air force's 1994 report
only created more questions.

What about all the rumors
of all the bodies?

I mean, balloons don't have pilots.

[music fades]

Today we are releasing the final report
to address questions about alleged bodies

associated with the Roswell story.

[Schmitt] In May of 1997,

in response...

in addressing the growing number
of witnesses to the bodies,

the air force was once again compelled
to come out with another report.

[intriguing music playing]

[man] Reports of aliens
were actually anthropomorphic test dummies

that were carried aloft

by air-force
high-altitude research balloons.

Critical examination
of alleged alien sightings

consistently match
the physical characteristics

of these dummies.

Crash test dummies
are today easily identifiable.

However, during the 1950s,

public awareness was still decades away
for these important scientific tools.

[Randle] The second report was
kind of laughed at by UFO researchers

because we saw all the flaws in it.

So that kind of eliminated, for us,
the legitimacy of the report.

[man 1] ...these figures
were of much smaller stature

than full-size adult figures.

-How do you reconcile that?
-I don't reconcile that.

I just have no idea why they say that.

[Schmitt] To us, it became a hodgepodge

of just trying to throw everything
against the wall

and seeing what could stick.

[man 2] Colonel, how do you square, uh,

the UFO enthusiasts saying
that they're talking about 1947,

and you're talking about
dummies used in the... in the '50s?

Well, I'm afraid that's the problem
that we have with time compression.

[woman] Why didn't people at the time say,
"Well, my goodness,

we were having dummy tests.
This explains the answer"?

Well, the dummy test actually... [chuckles]

You need to get the book. Actually...

[Schmitt] They're talking
about crash test dummies,

which didn't even come into existence
until 1952, five years later.

And so none of our witnesses
to the bodies in '47

could have been witnesses
to the crash test dummies.

Um...

I have it tabbed
and should be able to find it,

but, quite frankly, I'm sitting here,
and my knees are shaking.

[Schmitt] The vast majority
of my colleagues

see it as part of the cover-up.

It smacked of desperation.

That, if you don't like this, try this.
If you don't believe this, believe this.

But, quite frankly,
this is probably what it was.

[woman] You keep using
the word "probably,"

and you say, "Case closed."

Those two don't jibe.
How do you reconcile that?

From the air force's perspective,
that's exactly what it was.

[laughter]

[Schmitt] They knew they weren't gonna
get us to back down, ever,

and it has only motivated us all the more.

In fact, we felt rather vindicated
that they were acknowledging

that witnesses were describing bodies
that were not human.

The otherworld visitors, uh, the rain,
the heat doesn't bother them.

The word is space aliens don't sweat.

[Schmitt] The mainstream media
had this knee-jerk response that,

"Well, the government says this,
so, you know, we'll go along with it."

[Randle] The media enables
the UFO cover-up from the very beginning.

They do their 90 seconds on it,

and we can see
the tongue-in-cheek treatment

they gave the topic

because an awful lot of times
they were too sophisticated

to believe in flying saucers
from another planet, for crying out loud.

Next, they'll be saying
wrestling on TV is fake.

[Randle] One question
I'd like to get the answer to is

if there was a top-secret Project Mogul
balloon that fell out of the sky,

why is there no record of the crash?

Where's that documentation?

[Schmitt] Every aspect of this incident,

from the recovery to the transport,

would have been heavily documented,

and to suggest that all that documentation
has been misplaced, mislabeled,

or never existed
is just beyond human comprehension.

[unsettling music playing]

[Randle] If you can prove
that Roswell was some terrestrial event,

if you have better evidence, let us know.

[tense music playing]

[Randle] I believe that the military
experienced the recovery

of an alien spacecraft.

It's where the evidence is leading us.

The air force says they have no evidence
it was extraterrestrial.

But I think, when they're looking
for these sorts of records,

they're looking in the wrong places.

I think that the files were gathered up
and are in a different repository,

hidden deep
in the archives of the government,

and, therefore,
there was no paper trail to it.

Something happened out there
in that New Mexican desert.

Now, we're not getting the whole story.

Here we are now, 76 years later,

and now we're talking about
hearings in Washington,

and they keep talking about Roswell.

Since the Roswell incident in 1947,

many Americans have wondered

about the dangers of unknown objects
crisscrossing our skies.

Yet from Roswell, New Mexico,
to the coast of Jacksonville, Florida,

mountains of overclassified documents

continue to be hidden
from the American people.

The American people deserve to know
what is happening in our skies.

It is long overdue. Thank you.

A congressional committee
held a rare hearing on Capitol Hill today

on the subject of UFOs.

Now, those three men
testified before Congress today,

revealing shocking details
about what we call UFOs

but the government calls UAPs.

One former Pentagon employee
told Congress last week

that the truth is out there,

and it's being hidden
from the American people.

[Randle] When we began our investigation
more than 30 years ago,

we just did not have many pieces.

As we talked to people,
we got more and more pieces of the puzzle.

We began to understand more clearly
what was going on.

It is a labor of love
because I wanted to tell the story.

I thought there was a story
that needed to be told here.

[pensive music playing]

[Schmitt] It's been my life's work.

At times, I would ask myself,
"Was it worth it?"

But I've made my choice
to speak out for the witnesses,

to represent all of them,

because they want answers.

[Bean] I want them to say, "It did happen,

and I'm sorry your dad
had to carry that secret."

"I'm sorry he couldn't die in peace."

"I'm sorry he had to be laying in bed
dying and trying to relate a story

that, even while he was dying,
he was too scared to talk about."

What I want to find out is why.

They feel that the government owes them.

They feel that the Pentagon,
for example, has used their family.

[Tim] Seeing what my dad had to deal with,

the fact that they had to keep it secret,

it bothered him, but it was his duty,

and he was certainly not ashamed of that.

But I knew it, in some ways, defined him.

I'm very proud of what he did,
and... it makes me miss him a whole lot,

wishing I could have a couple more
conversations with him about it.

[Schmitt] The officers who were involved,

they were the elite in the military.

[poignant music playing]

And with Jesse Marcel Senior,

the government selecting him as the patsy,
as the fall guy

that's the ultimate crime
when you think about the fact

that he was used for all those years
to maintain a cover-up.

[Denice] When my grandfather spoke out,

to me, that seems very courageous
that he did that.

[Jesse] He definitely had
a lot of pressure,

but, at the end of the day,

my grandfather believed,
through the end of his life,

that what he was involved with
was not from this earth.

And he thought
he was the luckiest guy on this planet

because he was involved with it.

[music fades]

[ethereal music playing]

[Jesse] He and my father
both led their lives

believing that there's life out there
beyond us.

My father spent
the vast part of his later life

looking through telescopes,
building telescopes.

[Denice] My dad built
this amazing observatory.

His passion was that telescope.

He would tell me,
"When you're looking up at the sky,

there's a possibility
that somebody or something

is looking right back down at you
at the same time."

[Jesse] Ultimately, my father's dying wish

was that, in my lifetime,

that the government would finally
just come out and say,

"Yes, Roswell was real."

[Schmitt] We are confident
in our conviction

that we have demonstrated,
by the wealth of eyewitness testimony,

the documentation provided
with the sworn affidavits,

the video depositions,
the deathbed confessions,

that we have proven this
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But I still need to hold
a piece of the physical proof

that will help break this case.

[Randle] It is still an unsolved mystery

simply because we do not have
that last piece of the puzzle.

But there's still things that we can do.

There's still investigative tracks
we can follow.

[Schmitt] We're still
tracking down families.

We're still conducting archaeological work
out at the relevant sites.

We're still hunting.
We're still searching.

Whoever secures the proof,

I just wanna be at the finish line
at that time.

I wanna be around for that final victory,
which will be for everyone.

[Stack] Did our government in 1947
really discover evidence

that there is life in the universe
outside our own atmosphere?

[ethereal music playing]

[thunder rumbles]

[Stack] Perhaps it was
an experimental aircraft

that the military
wanted to keep top secret at all costs.

But perhaps, just perhaps,

it was something else.

[music fades]

[closing theme music playing]

[music ends]