Editing Roswell incident (section)

==Roswell conspiracy theories (1978–1994)==
{{External media| 
|video1=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv590ONs_J4&t=1514s Interviews with Jesse Marcel Sr. and Jr.] included in an ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]'' episode
|video2=[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roswell_Reports,_Volume_6.webm Interview with Jesse Marcel Jr.]
}}
Interest in Roswell was rekindled after [[Ufology|ufologist]] [[Stanton Friedman]] interviewed [[Jesse Marcel]] in 1978.<ref>{{harvnb|Time|1997|p=69}}</ref> Marcel had accompanied the Roswell debris from the ranch to the Fort Worth press conference.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|pp=247–248}}</ref> In the 1978 interview, Marcel stated that the "weather balloon" explanation from the press conference was a cover story,<ref name="Ziegler16">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=16}}</ref> and that he now believed the debris was extraterrestrial.<ref>{{harvnb|Frank|2023|pp=520–529}}</ref> On December 19, 1979, Marcel was interviewed by Bob Pratt of the ''[[National Enquirer]]'',<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|p=67}}</ref> and the tabloid brought large-scale attention to the Marcel story the following February.<ref>{{harvnb|Gildenberg|2003|p=65}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Pratt |first1=Bob |title=Former Intelligence Officer Reveals...I Picked Up Wreckage of UFO That Exploded Over US |newspaper=National Enquirer |date=February 26, 1980 |page=8}}</ref>  Marcel described a foil that could be crumpled but would uncrumple when released.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=285}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|pp=65–66}}</ref>  On September 20, 1980, the TV series ''[[In Search of... (TV series)|In Search of...]]'', hosted by Star Trek actor [[Leonard Nimoy]], aired an interview where Marcel described his participation in the 1947 press conference:<ref name="ABC-News-2005-p1"/>
{{blockquote|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 discussed – told the newspapers, I mean the newsman, what it was, and to forget about it. It is nothing more than a weather observation balloon. Of course, we both knew differently.<ref>{{cite episode |title=UFO Coverup |series=In Search Of... |date=September 20, 1980 |season=5 |number=1}}</ref>}}

The 1980 book ''[[The Roswell Incident (1980 book)|The Roswell Incident]]'' popularized Marcel's account and added the claimed discovery of alien bodies,<ref name="Clancy-2007-p93"/> found approximately 150 miles west of the original debris site on the [[Plains of San Agustin]].<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|p=10}}</ref> Marcel never mentioned the presence of bodies.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|p=186}}</ref> Major Marcel's son, Jesse A. Marcel Jr. M.D., said that when he was 10 years old, his father had shown him flying saucer debris recovered from the Roswell crash site, including, "a small beam with purple-hued hieroglyphics on it".<ref>{{harvnb|Associated Press|2013}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=26}}</ref> However, the symbols described as alien hieroglyphics matched the symbols on the adhesive tape that Project Mogul sourced from a New York toy manufacturer.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|pp=118–119}}</ref><ref name="Sagan-1997-p82">{{harvnb|Sagan|1997|p=82}}</ref> Friedman, Berlitz, and Moore also connected Marcel's account to an earlier statement by Lydia Sleppy, a former [[Teleprinter|teletype]] operator at the [[KSVA|KOAT]] radio station in [[Albuquerque, New Mexico]].<ref name="Goldberg 2001 193"/> Sleppy claimed that she was typing a story about crashed saucer wreckage as dictated by reporter Johnny McBoyle until interrupted by an incoming message, ordering her to end communications.<ref name="Goldberg 2001 193"/> Between 1978 and the early 1990s, UFO researchers such as Stanton Friedman, [[Bill Moore (ufologist)|William Moore]], and the team of [[Kevin D. Randle]] and Donald R. Schmitt interviewed many people who claimed to have had a connection with the events at Roswell in 1947, generating competing and conflicting accounts.<ref name="Korff-1997">{{cite magazine |last=Korff |first=Kal |date=August 1997 |url=https://skepticalinquirer.org/1997/07/what-really-happened-at-roswell/ |title=What Really Happened at Roswell |magazine=Skeptical Inquirer |volume=21 |issue=4 |access-date=February 5, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140418144129/http://www.csicop.org/si/show/what_really_happened_at_roswell |archive-date=April 18, 2014 |url-status=live |ref=none}}</ref>

===''The Roswell Incident''===
{{main|The Roswell Incident (1980 book)}}
{{Location map many |New Mexico
 |width=250
 |alt = Map of New Mexico showing relevant locations
 |caption=In 1947, officers from Roswell Army Air Field investigated a debris field near Corona. By the 1980s, popular accounts conflated the debris investigation with two separate myths of humanoid bodies over 300 miles away from Roswell.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=82}}</ref>
 |label1='''Corona debris'''<br />(1947)|position1=bottom|coordinates1={{coord|34|35|N|105|35|W}}|mark1=Fire.svg||mark1size=10
 |label2='''Barnett Legend''' (1980)|position2=bottom|coordinates2={{coord|33|52|31|N|108|7|15|W}}|mark2=Male Traditions.png|mark2size=30
 |label3='''Aztec Hoax''' (1949)|position3=bottom|coordinates3={{coord|36|49|20|N|107|59|34|W}}|mark3=Male Traditions.png|mark3size=30
 |label4='''Roswell Army Air Field''' <br />(1947)|position4=bottom|coordinates4={{coord|33|18|6|N|104|31|50|W}}|mark4=Map marker, star.svg|mark4size=15
}}

The first Roswell conspiracy book, released in October 1980, was ''The Roswell Incident'' by [[Charles Berlitz]] and [[Bill Moore (ufologist)|William Moore]].<ref name="ABC-News-2005-p2">{{harvnb|ABC News|2005|p=2}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|May|2016|p=68}}</ref> The authors had previously written popular books on fringe topics like the [[Philadelphia Experiment]] and the [[Bermuda Triangle]].<ref>{{harvnb|Frank|2023|p=531}}</ref> Anthropologist Charles Ziegler described the 1980 book as "version 1" of the Roswell myth.<ref name="Olmsted-2009-p184">{{harvnb|Olmsted|2009|p=184}}</ref> Berlitz and Moore's narrative was the dominant version of the Roswell conspiracy during the 1980s.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p197">{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|p=197}}</ref>

The book argues that an extraterrestrial craft was flying over the New Mexico desert to observe [[nuclear weapon]]s activity when a [[lightning]] strike killed the alien crew.<ref>{{harvnb|Frank|2023|p=534}}</ref> It alleges that, after recovering the crashed alien technology, the US government engaged in a cover-up to prevent mass panic.<ref name="Olmsted-2009-184quote" /> ''The Roswell Incident'' quoted Marcel's later description of the debris as "nothing made on this earth".<ref>{{harvnb|Berlitz|Moore|1980|p=28}}: "Nor did they mention a great quantity of highly unusual wreckage,  much of it metallic in nature, apparently originating from the same object and described by Major Marcel as "nothing made on this earth".</ref><ref name="Saler-1997-p14">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=14–17}}</ref> The book claims that in some photographs, the debris recovered by Marcel had been substituted for the debris from a weather device despite no visible differences in the photographed material.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|pp=248, 249}}</ref> The book's claims of unusual debris were contradicted by the mundane details provided by Captain Sheridan Cavitt, who had gathered the material with Marcel.<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=45}}</ref> ''The Roswell Incident'' introduced alien bodies{{snd}}via the second-hand legends of deceased civil engineer Grady "Barney" Barnett{{snd}}purportedly found by archaeologists on the [[Plains of San Agustin]].<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p196">{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|p=196}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=119}}</ref>

The authors claimed to have interviewed over 90 witnesses, though the testimony of only 25 appears in the book. Only seven of them claimed to have seen the debris. Of these, five claimed to have handled it.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=39}}</ref> Some elements of the witness accounts{{snd}}small alien bodies, indestructible metals, hieroglyphic writing{{snd}}matched other crashed saucer legends more than the 1947 reports from Roswell. Berlitz and Moore claimed Scully's long-discredited crashed saucer hoax to be an account of the Roswell incident that mistakenly "placed the area of the crash near Aztec".<ref name="Saler-1997-p14"/><ref>{{harvnb|Berlitz|Moore|1980|p=47}}: "In his apparent haste to get into print, Scully placed the area of the crash near Aztec, in the upper western corner of the state, hundreds of miles from Roswell, and this mistake is still evident in UFO and other books published throughout the world."</ref> In an interview with Mac Brazel's son, William Brazel Jr. described how the military arrested his father and "swore him to secrecy".<ref>{{harvnb|Berlitz|Moore|1980|p=75}}</ref><ref name="Goldberg-2001-p196"/> However, during the time that Brazel was alleged to have been in military custody, multiple people reported seeing him in Roswell, and he provided an interview to local radio station [[KCRX (AM)|KGFL]].<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=170}}</ref> The most significant witness was Jesse Marcel.<ref>{{harvnb|Ricketts|2011|p=249}}</ref> Independent researchers found patterns of embellishment in Jesse Marcel's accounts, including false statements about his military career and educational background.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|pp=62–68}}</ref>

===Majestic 12 hoax===
{{main|Majestic 12}}
{{external media
| video1 = [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCsKMZKgeHY Bill Moore addresses MUFON,  July 1 1989]
}}
Majestic 12 was the purported organization behind faked government documents delivered anonymously to multiple ufologists in the early 1980s.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=193}}</ref> All individuals who received the fake documents were connected to Bill Moore.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|pp=193–194}}</ref> After the publication of ''The Roswell Incident'', [[Mirage Men|Richard Doty]] and other individuals presenting themselves as Air Force Intelligence Officers approached Moore.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p213">{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|p=213}}</ref> They used the unfulfilled promise of hard evidence of extraterrestrial retrievals to recruit Moore, who kept notes on other ufologists and intentionally spread misinformation within the UFO community.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p213"/> At a 1989 [[Mutual UFO Network]] conference, Bill Moore confessed that he had intentionally fed fake evidence of extraterrestrials to UFO researchers including [[Paul Bennewitz]].<ref>{{harvnb|Gulyas|2016}}: "Bill Moore, in 1989, gave a talk at the Mutual UFO Network symposium which he revealed his role in the Bennewitz affair and other connections with government and military intelligence operatives [...]"</ref> Doty later said that he intentionally gave fabricated information to UFO researchers while working at [[Kirtland Air Force Base]] in the 1980s.<ref>{{harvnb|Kloor|2019|p=53}}</ref> Roswell conspiracy proponents turned on Moore, but not the broader conspiracy theory.<ref>{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|pp=207, 214}}</ref>

The Majestic-12 materials have been heavily scrutinized and discredited.<ref>{{harvnb|Gulyas|2016}}: "The MJ-12 papers have been the subject of an enormous amount of scrutiny, [...]"</ref> The various purported memos existed only as copies of photographs of documents.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=171}}</ref> [[Carl Sagan]] criticized the complete lack of [[provenance]] of documents "miraculously dropped on a doorstep like something out of a fairy story, perhaps '[[The Elves and the Shoemaker]]'."<ref>{{harvnb|Sagan|1997|p=88}}</ref> Researchers noted the idiosyncratic date format not found in government documents from the time they were purported to originate, but widely used in Bill Moore's personal notes.<ref>{{harvnb|Peebles|1994|p=266}}</ref>

In this variant of the Roswell legend, the bodies were ejected from the craft shortly before it exploded over the ranch.  The propulsion unit is destroyed and the government concludes the ship was a "short range reconnaissance craft".  The following week, the bodies are recovered some miles away, decomposing from exposure and scavengers.<ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=19}}</ref>

===Role of Glenn Dennis===
{{external media|video1=[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv590ONs_J4&t=1163 ''Unsolved Mysteries'' segment] September 20, 1989|video2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM2DFl1FJps&t=800s Glenn Dennis's story] as dramatized by ''Unsolved Mysteries'' September 18, 1994
}}

The initial claims of recovered alien bodies came from the secondhand accounts of "Barney" Barnett and "Pappy" Henderson after their deaths.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|pp=50, 94}}</ref> On August 5, 1989, Stanton Friedman interviewed former mortician Glenn Dennis.<ref name="McAndrew-1997-p75">{{harvnb|McAndrew|1997|p=75}}</ref> Dennis provided an account of extraterrestrial corpses endorsed by prominent Roswell ufologists Don Berliner, Stanton Friedman, Kevin Randle, and Donald Schmitt.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=88}}</ref> Dennis claimed to have received "four or five calls" from the Air Base with questions about body preservation and inquiries about small or hermetically sealed caskets; he further claimed that a local nurse told him she had witnessed an "alien autopsy". Glenn Dennis has been called the "star witness" of the Roswell incident.<ref name="McAndrew-1997-p75"/>

[[File:International UFO Museum and Research Center Roswell New Mexico (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|alt=Exterior photograph of building with sign reading UFO Museum and Research Center |In 1991, Glenn Dennis and Walter Haut opened a UFO museum in Roswell.]]

On September 20, 1989, an episode of ''[[Unsolved Mysteries]]''  included the second-hand stories of alien bodies captured by the Army and transported to Texas. The episode was watched by 28 million people.<ref name="Smith 2000 7">{{harvnb|Smith|2000|p=7}}</ref> In 1994, Dennis's account was portrayed by ''Unsolved Mysteries'' and dramatized in the made-for-TV movie ''Roswell''.<ref>{{cite episode |title=Legend: Roswell Crash and Area 51 |series=Unsolved Mysteries |date=September 18, 1994 |season=6 |number=33 |network=NBC |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM2DFl1FJps&t=800s |via=FilmRise True Crime}}</ref><ref name="Rich1994">{{harvnb|Rich|1994}}</ref> Dennis appeared in multiple books and documentaries.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|loc=ch.&nbsp;8}}</ref> In 1991, Dennis co-founded a [[International UFO Museum and Research Center|UFO museum in Roswell]] along with Max Littell and former RAAF public affairs officer Walter Haut.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|pp=146, 150}}</ref>

Dennis provided false names for the nurse who allegedly witnessed the autopsy. Presented with evidence that no such person existed, Dennis admitted to lying about the name.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|pp=191–192}}</ref>  [[Karl T. Pflock|Karl Pflock]] observed that Dennis's story "sounds like a B-grade thriller conceived by [[Oliver Stone]]."<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=127}}</ref>  [[Skeptical movement|Scientific skeptic]] author [[Brian Dunning (author)|Brian Dunning]] said that Dennis cannot be regarded as a reliable witness, considering that he had seemingly waited over 40 years before he started recounting a series of unconnected events. Such events, Dunning argues, were then arbitrarily joined to form what has become the most popular narrative of the alleged alien crash.<ref>{{harvnb|Dunning|2007}}</ref> Prominent UFO researchers, including Pflock and Kevin Randle, have become convinced that no bodies were recovered from the Roswell crash.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997a|p=5}}</ref>

===Competing accounts and schism===
A proliferation of competing Roswell accounts led to a schism among ufologists in the early 1990s.<ref name="Saler-p24">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=24}}</ref> The two leading UFO societies disagreed on the scenarios presented by Randle–Schmitt and Friedman–Berliner. One issue was the location of Barnett's account. A 1992 UFO conference attempted to achieve a consensus among the various scenarios portrayed in ''Crash at Corona'' and ''UFO Crash at Roswell''; however, the publication of ''The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell'' "resolved" the Barnett problem by simply ignoring Barnett and citing a new location for the alien craft recovery, including a new group of archaeologists not connected the Barnett story.<ref name="Saler-p24-25">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=24–25}}</ref>

====''UFO Crash at Roswell''====
[[File:Screenshot_of_Alien_Prop_from_Roswell,_The_UFO_Cover_Up_(1994).jpeg|thumb|right|alt=Grey alien film prop |Still from the 1994 film ''[[Roswell (film)|Roswell: The UFO Cover Up]]'', based on the 1991 book.  After filming, the prop became part of a permanent exhibit at a Roswell tourist attraction.<ref>{{harvnb|Yardley|2019}}</ref>]]
In 1991, Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt published ''UFO Crash at Roswell''.<ref name="Saler 1997 20">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=20}}</ref> The 1991 book sold 160,000 copies and served as the basis for the 1994 television film ''[[Roswell (film)|Roswell]]''.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p199">{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|p=199}}</ref> Randle and Schmitt added testimony from 100 new witnesses.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p197" /> Though hundreds of people were interviewed by various researchers, only a few claimed to have seen debris or aliens. According to Pflock, of the 300-plus individuals reportedly interviewed for ''UFO Crash at Roswell'' (1991), only 23 could be "reasonably thought to have seen physical evidence, debris". Of these, only seven asserted anything suggestive of otherworldly origins for the debris.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|pp=176–177}}</ref>

{{external media|video1=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj9In3kaqf4&t=2487s Thomas DuBose interview] in ''Recollections of Roswell'' (1992)}}

The book claimed that General [[Arthur Exon]] had been aware of debris and bodies, but Exon disputed his depiction.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=36}}</ref> Glenn Dennis's claims of an alien autopsy and Grady Barnett's "alien body" accounts appeared in the book.<ref>{{cite news |date=October 27, 1991 |last=Thompson |first=Fritz |title=The Roswell Incident |work=[[Albuquerque Journal]] |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/156680745/ |page=84 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=34}}</ref> However, the dates and locations of Barnett's account in ''The Roswell Incident'' were changed without explanation. Brazel was described as leading the Army to a second crash site on the ranch, where the Army personnel were supposedly "horrified to find civilians [including Barnett] there already."<ref>{{harvnb|Randle|Schmitt|1991|p=206}}</ref><ref name="Saler 1997 20"/> Also in 1991, retired [[US Air Force]] (USAF) Brigadier General [[Thomas DuBose]], who had posed with debris for press photographs in 1947, acknowledged the "weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press."<ref name="Pflock-2001-p33"/>

====''Crash at Corona''====
In 1992, Stanton Friedman released ''Crash at Corona'', co-authored with Don Berliner.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p199" /> The book introduced new "witnesses" and added to the narrative by doubling the number of flying saucers to two, and the number of aliens to eight{{snd}}two of which were said to have survived and been taken into custody by the government.<ref name="Goldberg-2001-p199" /><ref name="Saler-p21">{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|pp=21–22}}</ref> Friedman interviewed Lydia Sleppy the teletype operator who years earlier had said that she was ordered not to transmit a crashed saucer story.<ref name="Goldberg 2001 204">{{harvnb|Goldberg|2001|p=204}}</ref> Friedman attributed Sleppy's account to FBI usage of an alleged nationwide surveillance system that he believed was put in place following "an earlier crash".<ref>{{harvnb|Friedman|Berliner|1997|p=132}}</ref>
<ref name="Goldberg 2001 204"/> However, no evidence was found that the FBI had ever monitored any transmissions from her radio station.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=43}}</ref> Friedman's description of her typing as "interrupted" by an FBI message and Moore's claim that "the machine suddenly stopped itself" were found to be impossible for the teletype model that Sleppy operated in 1947.<ref>{{harvnb|Friedman|Berliner|1997|p=12}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Pflock|2001|p=175}}</ref>

====''The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell''====
In 1994, Randle and Schmitt authored another book, ''The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell'' which claimed a cargo plane delivered alien bodies to [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]].<ref>{{harvnb|Randle|Schmitt|1994}}</ref><ref name="Goldberg-2001-p199" /> The book abandoned the Barnett crash site on the Plains of San Agustin as lacking evidence and contradicting its "framework of the Roswell event".<ref>{{harvnb|Randle|Schmitt|1994|p=155}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Saler|Ziegler|Moore|1997|p=25}}</ref> Randle and Schmitt proposed a new crash site 35 miles north of Roswell, based on statements from Jim Ragsdale and Frank Kaufman.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|pp=97, 109}}</ref> The book hid Kaufman's identity behind the pseudonym "Steve MacKenzie", but Kaufman appeared in the 1995 British television documentary ''The Roswell Incident'' using his real name.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|p=108}}</ref> Kaufman claimed he monitored a UFO's path on radar and recovered debris from a crashed spaceship similar in shape to an [[Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk|F-117 stealth fighter]].<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|pp=107–108}}</ref> Kaufmann's statements did not match the personnel at the base, his service record, the radar technology available, or the known topography of the proposed crashed site.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|pp=97–98}}</ref> Jim Ragsdale claimed that while driving home along Highway 285 with his girlfriend Trudy Truelove, they watched a craft that was "narrow with a bat-like wing" crash.<ref>{{harvnb|Randle|Schmitt|1994|p=180}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|p=99}}</ref> A later interview with Ragsdale clarified that his alleged crash site was nowhere near either the purported Barnett or Kaufman sites.<ref>{{harvnb|Klass|1997b|p=148}}</ref> In further interviews, Ragsdale's story grew to include bizarre details such as Ragsdale and Truelove removing eleven golden helmets from the alien craft to bury in the desert.<ref>{{harvnb|Korff|1997|p=100}}</ref>