Hi I'm new here but I've been interested in this subject for nearly all my life (about 20 years or so) and I've been reading this site for some time now and decided to join and post what I thought was something intriguing about the Roswell 47 case (maybe it's been mentioned before here but I don't think I've ever seen this mentioned in any book I've read on the subject or anywhere else)

Here's the question: Why would the government put on display for the media (after pulling the original press release that they had a "saucer" in their possession) the remains of a top secret weather balloon?

From what I can ascertain, they were originally going to put on display the actual debris but whoever was in charge at the time, minutes before the press were to arrive, replaced the actual debris with sticks, tape and foil.

Why wouldn't they have just called off the press conference and told the reporters that the materials were of a top secret weather balloon that they could not see, for reasons of national security, rather than put on a dog-and-pony show and "supposedly" risk national security by showing the media this "top secret weather balloon"

I don't really know what this could prove, other than the military and government are so totally inept that they could leave such a big hole in something so important, but then again they also had plans in the 1960s to fake a terrorist attack on US soil to give themselves a reason to invade Cuba, so anything's possible

- LinkTGF

possible scenario:

- it could have been the first time a UFO was recovered (before they may have just been aware of sightings)
- the chain of command didn't know how to react (and maybe was not informed in the first hours)
- some kind of dummy blew up the story to the press forcing some officials to come up with an idea going in the opposite direction...

I let you imagine the outcome in 1947:

people were starting to talk about all that, the government couldnt just let it go "ok guys, we are being visited but we know nothing about them and cant do a thing about it". Usually when you dont know, you say nothing...

Soviets would have asked to share the loot with the US arguing that "for mankind" it would be selfish from the US to keep this away from other governments. the US wouldnt have shared. the soviets would have feared that the fragile equilibrium in between East and West would drift and would have fired at the US.

and "seeing is believing": just use some kind of visual crap and tell the people its a secret project and that for their own safety it's better they dont know. sure they will buy it...

Actually, if anything came down the sky in 1947, I certainly wouldnt blame the government for a cover up...


and it's always good to have a "top secret project": taxpayers, your money is use for something useful to ensure the mightiness of the US.



following to that we can also imagine that the "cover up" of the alien went down the drain and that they made contact with the US government.

Originally posted by LinkTGF
Here's the question: Why would the government put on display for the media (after pulling the original press release that they had a "saucer" in their possession) the remains of a top secret weather balloon?

According to Walter Haut, there were two crash sites, one with debris and one with the actual ship and alien bodies. Public attention was increasing, so the original captured flying saucer press release was made to draw public attention away from the disc site and keep them focus on the debris site. According to Jesse Marcel, the original intention of the press conference was to display bits of the actual flying saucer debris, but it was substituted at the last minute with the radar reflecting Mogul stuff. It was decided by somebody that as long as attention was being diverted pretty well with the debris, why not go the extra step and just say it was a weather balloon with a radar target on it? The Top Secret aspect of Mogul was never brought up and the debris was explained as being just a part of a weather balloon project. And the press bought it. As it has been mentioned in the past, at this point in history, the press wasn't really out to dig up government dirt, and they just reported what they were told. The original flying saucer press release was a dopey military snafu, and the balloon stuff is the truth.

Of course, it's up to you and your own research to determine which side of the story makes the most sense. Personally, I think both sides have big problems, which leads me to think that there's another hidden element of the story that we don't know about.

Thanks for the answers, guys - it does seem to make sense to divert attention away with a bogus weather balloon unveiling and after 60 years it's hard to remember that they didn't know things then that we know now (like that the mogul project was secret)

Cool cool, thanks again

Its all about pacifying the public.

Ken Arnold sees several "invaders" flying in a V formation at a tremendous speed for the time period.

These represent the unknown threat to the public and makes the general public un-easy about the level of security our goverment can provide.

Roswell incident happens and first report is that we recovered a "flying saucer" tying into the Ken Arnold "saucer wave".

We inform the public saucer debris recovered from Mac Brazel's ranch.

We make sort of a big deal about it, front page news

We hold a press event to show off the debris, then we immediately retract the story while at the same time showing the debris to be common balloon related materials.

The plan is to instill a sense of doubt in the public by discounting Ken's "saucer wave" by making the logical assumption that if military said saucer but really balloon then non military Mr. Arnold must have mistaken what he saw to be balloons as well. In fact if what Ken saw was a mogul ballon train and it was travelling in a vertical V orientation having the middle section of the ballons moving more forward then the lower or upper ballons since they could have more drag or be out of the jet stream propelling the ballon train forward...

Regardless of the rational to tie in discounting Ken Arnolds sighting with the "recovery" at Roswell the truth is for 30 years the story pretty much ended there. No public outcry, no dissent no inquiries or congressional oversight commitiees, no presdential instructions, no national retractions, no editorial comment. In fact the public apparently let Roswell die all together.

The goverments tactic then worked at not only difussing Ken Arnolds sighting but by reducing Roswell to a factoid in a local paper around July 8th, 1947.

It is therefore very obvious that the "news event" was a carefully crafted and with purpose necessary action for the goverment to take in regards to keeping the interest of National Security.

Soon afterwards Trumman would form the NSA as a co-ordinating, policy enacting body of individuals that could work with Federal, state and local authorities to quickly ensure the right "spin" could be immediately released and "enforced" to the media outlets, so that future "cosmic troubling" events could be handled with a minimum threat to "national security".

btw "National Security" in layman terms is, keep the public unaware of real threats...