The Great UFO Cover-Up?

SIXTY-FIVE YEARS AGO - Officials from the public information office at Roswell Army Air Field issued a statement on July 8, 1947, claiming that a crashed “flying disk” had been recovered by military personnel from a nearby farm.  

The following day, the commander of the Eighth Air Force stated that a radar-tracking balloon had crashed and been recovered, not a “flying disk.”  A later press conference displayed what was said to be wreckage and which appeared to verify the General’s explanation.

The incident leapt from obscurity in 1978, when one of the officers involved in the recovery told a “ufologist” (i.e., one who studies UFOs) that the military had recovered an alien spacecraft and had covered up the fact.  From that point, the story acquired a life of its own, including everything from National Enquirer articles, to documentaries, to two congressional inquiries in the 1990s.  There have also been reports of as many as ten additional crash sites and, of course, alien autopsies.  

 

One of the many wonderful things about freedom of speech is just how entertaining it can be.  It takes a truly open society to tolerate, sometimes embrace, and even occasionally celebrate our fellow Americans who can become obsessed by such an off-the-wall story.