Roswell's Legacy: How a Town Became UFO Central (Part 2)

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Roswell's Legacy: How a Town Became UFO Central (Part 2)
July 2, 2010
Lee Spiegel
AOL News


If you like golf, nature reserves and art museums, Roswell, N.M., might be up your alley. If you also happen to like aliens, UFOs and military secrets, you've hit the mother lode this weekend.

Roswell -- population 50,000 -- is in full celebration mode, commemorating the 63rd anniversary of a reported UFO crash that, in 1947, single-handedly gave birth to the idea of government secrecy and cover-up.

That's no small feat for a small town.

"I believe that there was an event that happened in 1947. I haven't seen it myself, but I certainly believe that there are extraterrestrial beings of some type in the universe," said Roswell Mayor Del Jurney.


Joe Raedle, Getty Images
Groups dressed as aliens ride through downtown Roswell, N.M., during a previous UFO festival.
In part 1 of this story, we looked at how it all began when an object crashed into a ranch outside of Roswell and a subsequent military investigation resulted in a press release and headline stating that the Roswell Army Air Field had captured a flying saucer.

When the official explanation was changed to a weather balloon, the press lost interest in the matter.

But the balloon explanation began to deflate more than 30 years later when Maj. Jesse Marcel Sr. -- the man who headed the military investigation -- first revealed to nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman what he believed was the truth about the 1947 crash.
UFOs and Alien Encounters?

Eric Draper, AP11 photos
America's most infamous UFO case centers in Roswell, N.M. Some people claimed an alien spacecraft crashed there in 1947; the military said it was a weather balloon.
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UFOs and Alien Encounters?
America's most infamous UFO case centers in Roswell, N.M. Some people claimed an alien spacecraft crashed there in 1947; the military said it was a weather balloon.
Eric Draper, AP
Eric Draper, AP
"The one thing about that weather balloon story -- there was no weather balloon that the Air Force or even civilian observers had that would've covered that great an area of debris," Marcel told me in 1979.

"And particularly, it was material that nobody could identify, and I knew all the materials that were used in weather observation in those days. It's something I'd never seen before and I haven't seen since, and it made me conjecture that it was something from outer space," Marcel said.

As more military people slowly emerged to offer testimony of their involvement with the 1947 incident, there were claims of multiple crash sites, as well as the recovery of alien bodies.

The Air Force subsequently issued two more official explanations in the 1990s, concluding that the Roswell crash site material was, in fact, from Project Mogul, a secret program of atmospheric balloons that were used to detect Soviet nuclear tests.
And those ET bodies? They were said to be misidentified crash test dummies that were used in later military experiments.

Even scientists who are involved with the high-profile search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the SETI Institute in California have told me of their doubts about the Roswell alien spaceship theory.

"In the beginning, they would've kept it secret because they were trying to determine if the Soviet Union had the H bomb," said SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak. "But the public finds it much more interesting to think that aliens traveled hundreds of light-years and, in the last couple of hundred feet, made a navigational error and slammed into the New Mexico desert.

"It's more interesting to think that the government has the aliens freeze-dried and stacked up somewhere."

Despite the ongoing debate between UFO believers and skeptics, for this weekend, at least, all are welcome -- human or alien -- in Roswell as two separate celebrations pay tribute to the events of 1947.

Joe Raedle, Getty Images
Aliens of all shapes and sizes can be seen throughout Roswell, N.M., this weekend for the annual UFO festival.

"It's going to be very family-friendly -- between the lecture series, sports tournaments, costume contests, parades and music entertainment, there's something for every demographic," said Renee Roach, coordinator of the Roswell city event.

The city's festival theme this year is "Aliens in Cinema," a celebration of extraterrestrials in films. Appropriately, Hollywood producer Bryce Zabel is in Roswell to announce plans for a film project, which will dramatize the efforts of two authors and former competitors to break the Roswell story.

Zabel, a former CNN correspondent and chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, will take the stage at the city's other festival venue, the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Along with his producing partner Don Most, he will introduce ex-nuclear physicist Friedman and former postal clerk Donald Schmitt, the subjects of his upcoming film, "Majic Men."

"I keep coming back to this subject because there's an underlying truth to it, and it makes for some really compelling stories, and the stories have global implications," said Zabel, who co-created and executive-produced the 1996 Emmy Award-winning NBC science fiction series "Dark Skies."

"From a Hollywood entertainment business point of view, it makes good sense," he said. "But from a global citizen point of view, it also makes good sense. It's just simply time for us to acknowledge this reality and get on with our lives."

Throughout the ongoing Roswell debate, UFO proponents always hope for a political light at the end of the ET tunnel.
New Mexico's governor -- and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate -- Bill Richardson has chimed in on the controversy more than once.

In the foreword to the book "The Roswell Dig Diaries" (2004), Richardson wrote: "The mystery surrounding this crash has never been adequately explained -- not by independent investigators and not by the U.S. government. There are as many theories as there are official explanations.

"Clearly, it would help everyone if the U.S. government disclosed everything it knows," Richardson added. "The American people can handle the truth -- no matter how bizarre or mundane."

If Richardson had won the 2008 election, we can only wonder if he would have made good on his words.

After the Roswell UFO festival ends, sending thousands of beings back to their respective homes in the universe, the city will be in no danger of giving up its stature as the UFO capital of the world.

When the myth and legend of Roswell started to seep into America's consciousness in the late 1970s, Jesse Marcel admitted he wasn't entirely proud of how things were originally handled by the military.

"But I'm glad I'm the one who had something to do with it to begin with," he said. "I'm gratified to know that I'm the one who started the whole thing."


You could easily see how these 68 daredevils over Lake Elsinore, Calif., could be mistaken for space travelers descending on the earth. Raise the Sky, a nonprofit organization, raised more than $5,000 for City Year, a group that tries to keep kids from dropping out of school.