Accounts of cover-ups
It was so secret it was "beyond top secret"Lydia Sleppy was one of the first witnesses to claim the government tried to conceal what happened. She was a Teletype operator working at an Albuquerque radio station in 1947. She said that when she tried to transmit a phoned-in reporter's story of the crashed flying saucer and seeing an object like a smashed dishpan at the Brazel ranch, the FBI cut it off and ordered that they cease transmission.
Lt. Walter Haut, Roswell public information officer, in his 2002 affidavit claimed an elaborate cover-up was carried out. "On Tuesday morning, July 8, I would attend the regularly scheduled staff meeting at 7:30 a.m. Besides Blanchard, Marcel, CIC Capt. Sheridan Cavitt [names other senior officers], and from Carswell AAF in Fort Worth, Texas, Blanchards boss, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey and his chief of staff, Col. Thomas J. Dubose were also in attendance. The main topic of discussion was reported by Marcel and Cavitt regarding an extensive debris field in Lincoln County ..... A preliminary briefing was provided by Blanchard about the second site approx. 40 miles (64 km) north of town..... One of the main concerns discussed at the meeting was whether we should go public or not with the discovery. Gen. Ramey proposed a plan, which I believe originated with his bosses at the Pentagon. Attention needed to be diverted from the more important site north of town by acknowledging the other location. Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed. I was not completely informed how this would be accomplished. At approximately 9:30 a.m. Col. Blanchard phoned my office and dictated the press release of having in our possession a flying disc, coming from a ranch northwest of Roswell, and Marcel flying the material to higher headquarters ..... "In addition, Haut stated that he was aware two separate teams would return to each site months later for periodic searches for any remaining evidence."
Major Jesse Marcel, Roswell intelligence officer, was ordered to Fort Worth to show Gen. Roger Ramey recovered crash materials. In one interview, he said a photo was taken of him with the real debris, but then everything was removed and other material substituted for subsequent press photos. He then claimed that the original debris was in the photos, but covered by paper to shield it from the press.
"The stuff in that one photo was a piece of the actual stuff we had found. It was not a staged photo. Later they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. They then allowed more photos. Those photos were taken while the actual wreckage was on its way to Wright Field."
[referring to photo of Ramey with weather balloon] "That's a fake ..... What you see there is nothing but a piece of brown paper that I put over [the real debris] so that the news media couldn't get a picture of what I had. [I covered the real stuff, including in the photo of me you are showing. Ramey told me] "Just don't say anything. Don't show anything." ..... [Ramey] claimed that it was fragments of a weather balloon ..... I knew it wasn't a weather balloon, and Ramey knew it wasn't a weather balloon. They had the picture made strictly for the press." To get them [the press] off my back, I told them we were recovering a downed weather balloon. I was told later that a military team from my base was sent to rake the entire area."
Brig. Gen. Thomas Dubose, chief of staff to Gen. Ramey (and both of whom appear in press photos with weather balloon in Ramey's office), said in an affidavit. "The material shown in the photographs taken in Maj. Gen. Ramey's office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press. "In several interviews, like Marcel, he indicated they substituted material they had brought in from elsewhere for the real debris, which he said even he was never allowed to see because of all the secrecy. He said deputy Chief of the Strategic Air Command, General Clements McMullen ordered him by phone to start a cover-up. Several days before the press photos were taken, Dubose said McMullen also ordered a shipment of debris from Roswell to Washington by "colonel courier," and subsequently was flown to Wright Field for analysis. McMullen ordered absolute secrecy, said Dubose, and said it was so secret it was "beyond top secret."Dubose was not to discuss this with anybody.
"[Gen] McMullen said,look why don't you come up with something, anything you can use to get the press off our back? So we came up with this weather balloon story. Somebody got one and we ran it up a couple of hundred feet and dropped it to make it look like it crashed, and that's what we used."
"Actually, it was a cover story, the balloon part of it ..... Somebody cooked up the idea as a cover story ..... we'll use this weather balloon ..... We were told this is the story that is to be given to the press, and that is it, and anything else, forget it ..... McMullen told me, "You are not to discuss this ..... this is more than top secret ..... it's beyond that. It's within my priority as deputy to George Kenney, and he in turn is responsible to the President, this is the highest priority you can exhibit. And you will say nothing."
Brig. Gen. Arthur Exon, former commanding officer at Wright-Patterson AFB, stated, "I know tat at the time the sightings happened, it was to Gen. Ramey ..... and he, along with the people at Roswell, decided to change the story while they got their act together and got the information into the Pentagon and into the president." Also he said, "all these guys at the top of government" (such as Air Force Chief of Staff Spaatz and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington) ..... They were the ones who knew the most about Roswell, New Mexico. They were involved in what to do about the residue from that."
Moon-walker and Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has made various public statements about the reality of Roswell: "Make no mistake, Roswell happened. I've seen secret files that show the government knew about it -but decided not to tell the public. I wasn't convinced about the existence of aliens until I started talking to the military old-timers who were there at the time of Roswell. The more government documentation on aliens I was told about, the more convinced I became." Mitchell has also spoken about bodies: "A few insiders know the truth ..... and are studying the bodies that have been discovered." Mitchell added that a cabal of insiders stopped briefing Presidents after Kennedy.
