Roswell embraces past and turns a buck ($35,000,000 a year!)

When it comes to playing up its space oddities, this town doesn't hold back

You guys are going to love this...

www.msnbc.msn.com...

ROSWELL, N.M. - Sixty years after bigheaded, toothpick-limbed green aliens allegedly crashed in the New Mexico desert - leaving little but paranoia in their wake - Roswell embraces the extraterrestrial.

Ouch.

For those of you who think nobody is making any real money off the Roswell Myth think again, check out how much money Walter Haut's daughter (Julie Shuster) who runs the museum now is raking in for Roswell...

Each month, the museum greets visitors from all 50 states and 35 countries - 2.5 million since its founding. According to one analysis, it generates $35 million in indirect spending each year for the city of 50,000 residents.

Shuster said her father never imagined it would be so wildly popular, but now she sees herself as the caretaker of his legacy.

The museum has outgrown its home at a former movie theater and soon will occupy a new $25 million building. Shuster acknowledges there's been friction with some souvenir shop owners who complain retailers will be hurt when the museum moves five blocks up Main Street. She jokes that she no longer feels all the knives thrown into her back.

Still, it's clear she can't entirely ignore what is being said.

"Yes, it's personal for me," she says, sniffing back tears during an interview at her museum office. "People say, `She's too intense. She takes it too personally.' Well, how much more personal can it get than running your daddy's business?"

Seems to me that's a pretty big incentive for people to lie and do anything thing they can to obfuscate the truth. As they say, follow the money!

The good news though is some people are finally waking up to the truth...

"We're beginning to wonder," says Brian Lewis of Paso Robles, Calif., passing through Roswell recently with his family, "if the real conspiracy is to draw in all the tourists."

Bank on it!

Hey, at least you can’t say nobody tried to warn you.

Later,

AD

[edit on 9-7-2007 by Access Denied]

You need to count your zeroes. $35 billion is just a little more than $35 million, though I would be happy to have either amount.

I also fail to see how toursist spending money on hotels, gas, restaurants, and trinkets has anything to do with the many witnesses who have come forward, most of whom do not inhabit Roswell. If the gas station owner or the restaurant owner was claiming he saw the dead critters, I see your point, but that's not the case. Unless you can attribute this $35 million to specific people who have "lied" to make money, that fact that toursists flock to Roswell is largely irrelevant.

Beware people who dabble in spreadsheets. The give you very precise inaccuracies.

[edit on 7/9/2007 by schuyler]

Oops, minor detail. Thanks, I started seeing dollar signs flashing and went nuts...

[Roswell takes a slight pay cut]

You're kidding right? Do you honestly think if it wasn't for all the people who've lied over the years about what happened in Roswell in 1947 anybody would bother to go there?

I've got no problem with Roswell becoming the UFO "Capital of the World" as a result of what has, for better or worse, become part of their history. What I do have a problem with is the people who continue to lie or attempt to further obfuscate the truth in order to profit from it somehow.


[edit on 10-7-2007 by Access Denied]

Man those greys are great businessmen or business-thingies. How did they know that this whole thing would work in little Roswell?

AD you should go down there dressed as a MOGUL balloon chain and scare the kids. Or open a competing Mogul museum next door.

Just because a story can be profitable doesn't necessarily mean the story isn't true. Is it wrong to make money from a story about crashed aliens if it really is true? After studying the Roswell case pretty thoroughly, I don't see how it couldn't have been a disc that crashed out there...

[edit on 9-7-2007 by Diplomat]

To diplomat,

Just because a story can be profitable doesn't necessarily mean the story isn't true. Is it wrong to make money from a story about crashed aliens if it really is true? After studying the Roswell case pretty thoroughly, I don't see how it couldn't have been a disc that crashed out there...

Ahhhhhh . . . there you go and have to point out idiotic illogic! Can't you let the naysayers with blind fantasies and assumptions scoff in peace???

Of course you are correct. But folks addicted to naysaying just don't think down such logical intellectual channels very often. It's more fun--especially

if

they are insecure and fear ridden about the topic . . . it's just more fun to be derisive, dismissive and otherwise hostile to the whole idea that anyone would tell the truth about Roswell for any reasons . . . especially if that told truth doesn't fit such naysayers's assumptions, narrow rigid biases and caustic cranial cogitations.

The long string of quality witnesses cross corroborated by a diversity of other quality witnesses just doesn't register on their tiny narrow little screen. But don't bother trying to interrest them in an LCD flat panel screen. They have no compatible plugs to fit anything wider than about 3/8ths of an inch and about a an eigth of an inch high. And that's the big movie version. It's just a law amongst the Medes and Persians that naysayers are not allowed mental screens that are any bigger.

If they were, they might see some truth and expand their understanding as well as their consciousness. And THEN where would the culture be! What horror!

Why, we'd have naysayers running around getting truth or religion or passing out from cow farts or some such. The culture couldn't survive!

Best to leave them to their tiny little screens and their tiny inadequate constructions on Roswell realities.

It allows those who realize and know the truths of Roswell to go merily on less encumbered by the carping naysayers and their endless rants about the expensive cow farts and how awful it is for global warming . . . and how that's all Bush's fault etc. etc. etc.

/sar

Originally posted by Diplomat
Just because a story can be profitable doesn't necessarily mean the story isn't true. Is it wrong to make money from a story about crashed aliens if it really is true?

Of course not, but when you get right down to it, the fact is after 60 years there's still zero evidence to support that claim other than hearsay, most of which, if not all, has already been debunked or proven false, and a newspaper headline that's most likely been taken way out of context. The question should be is it wrong to make money from a story about crashed aliens sold as fact when based on the evidence it's proven fiction?

(Keeping in mind that ignorance of the established facts is no excuse.)

Originally posted by Diplomat
After studying the Roswell case pretty thoroughly, I don't see how it couldn't have been a disc that crashed out there...

Really? I'm curious, what one thing convinces you the most beyond all reasonable doubt?

I'm not saying this applies to you but there’s one critical mistake the Roswell supporters all seem to make in my opinion, failing to take into account (or choosing to ignore?) those who where there and didn’t see anything unusual at all. Here’s one for example…

THE PERSPECTIVE OF CAPT. KIMBALL
roswellfiles.com...

In 1947 I was a Captain, U.S. Army (Medical Administrative Corps) assigned to Squadron M (Base Hospital), 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Base. My primary duty was Medical Supply Officer for the Base Hospital. You would think that with all of the books that have been written, TV shows fictionalizing the incident, and the coverage the summer of 1997 in the media (major articles in the New York Times, cover stories in Time Magazine and Popular Science) that there must have been a great furor at the Base at that time (July 1947). To the contrary, life went on as usual. Most of the medical staff spent their time at the Officer's Club swimming pool every afternoon after duty hours. The biggest excitement was the cut-throat hearts game in the BOQ and an intense bingo, bango bungo golf game at the local nine hole golf course for a nickel a point!! There was absolutely NO unusual activity on the Base, no base alerts, no hysteria, no panic in July 1947. Life went on as usual.

(See additional comments below concerning the 8th Air Force football team)

In fact, the first I heard of this "cataclysmic event" was in the Fall of 1992 when I was called by Stanton Friedman to see if I could verify any of the activities that allegedly occurred at the Base Hospital concerning the recovery of alien remains. Friedman had found my name and picture in the 1947 RAAF Yearbook. My wife, Jane (who was with me in Roswell and who worked on the base), and I decided we had better try and find out what had supposedly happened. We did a library search and later obtained the Friedman/Berliner book and the Randle/Schmitt book cited above. What we have found is that much of what is in these books concerning the Base Hospital is incorrect and more fiction than fact.

In Crash at Corona, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician employed by the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, is reported as having brought an injured GI "to the base infirmary, which was in the same building as the hospital and mortuary." (p.116) Dennis is also quoted as saying he had received numerous calls from the Roswell AAF mortuary officer concerning sealed caskets. One of the photographs following p. 70 is captioned: "Rear of the hospital at Roswell Army Air Field. It was here that Glenn Dennis parked and walked in while small humanoid bodies were being prepared for shipment." Dennis, in his statements, tells of discussions with a young nurse, later identified as Naomi Maria Selff, who told him (Dennis) details about "three little bodies" being autopsied at the Base Hospital.

FACTS:

1. There was no mortuary on the Base. There was no AAF mortuary officer with such an assignment. As Medical Supply Officer I was responsible for obtaining, maintaining and issuing all supplies and equipment for the Base Hospital and any functions of a mortuary officer would have been within my responsibilities. I never met Glenn Dennis and I don't recall ever calling him for anything.

2. There was no nurse named Naomi Maria Selff assigned to the Base Hospital during the period I was assigned there (1946-1948). I was well acquainted with all five nurses assigned during this time and none of them anywhere near fit Dennis' description of the nurse he knew. Further research by UFO researcher Victor Golubic has determined that no nurse by that name was ever commissioned in the U.S. Army or assigned to the Army Air Force.

3. The photograph cited above is of a two story brick structure. The entire hospital complex was a World War II cantonment type, one-story, wooden frame structure. There were NO two story buildings and NO brick structures in the complex.

4. In their book, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Randle and Schmitt state that a Major Jesse B. Johnson, Squadron M, 509th Bomb Group, (Base Hospital), was the base pathologist, who assisted in a preliminary autopsies on alien bodies. In their footnotes to Chapter 10, Randle & Schmitt claim that "Johnson's position as a pathologist has been verified by a number of former members of the 509th Bomb Group [and] verified by the 509th yearbook and the RAAF unit history."

FACTS:

1. There was a physician named Jesse B. Johnson assigned to the Base Hospital. However, he was a 1st Lt., not a Major, and he was a radiologist, not a pathologist. He had no training as a pathologist and would have been the last member of the medical staff to have performed any autopsy on a human much less an alien!! He is identified as a 1st Lt in the 509th Yearbook.

2. After I learned of these assertions, I called Doctor Jack Comstock, who, as a Major, was the Hospital Commander in 1947, and in 1995 was living in retirement in Boulder, Colorado. I asked him if he recalled any such events occurring in July of 1947 and he said absolutely not. When I told him that Jesse B. was supposed to have conducted a preliminary autopsy on alien bodies, he had a hard time stopping laughing - his response was: PREPOSTEROUS!!

3. Major Comstock lived in the Hospital BOQ, located in the hospital complex. Any unusual activity was immediately reported to him by members of the medical and nursing staff. He told me (this was in 1995 prior to his death in February 1996) that NOTHING of this nature occurred in July 1947 at the Base Hospital.

CONCLUSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:
From first-hand knowledge, I am reasonably certain that no alien bodies were brought to the Base Hospital in July 1947 where "preliminary autopsies" were supposedly conducted. There was no nurse by the name of Naomi Maria Selff ever assigned to Squadron M, 509th Bomb Group. The statements made by Glenn Dennis are not credible. The accounts in the Randle/Schmitt book concerning Jesse B. Johnson are fiction.

If it was such a big deal how did all these people who claim there was all this unusual “activity” going on see it when so many more did not?

(I can cite more examples like pilots and crew, some of whom actually handled the debris, that I bet most supporters have never heard of either.)

Why don’t the Roswell book authors tell you about these people?

What about all the people who have made extraordinary claims that actually contradict each other or people like Frank Kaufman who turned out to have forged documents that many of the authors used?

What about people like Marcel Sr. who lied about his military career? What makes him so believable?

(Never mind his contradictory testimony.)

Is the “will to believe” so strong that common sense has gone completely out the window for some people?

Sorry but I find this fascinating.

Originally posted by Access Denied

and a newspaper headline that's most likely been taken way out of context.

"A" newspaper headline? Is that all you thought was going on in the media? This event was being reported by more people than just a single Roswell reporter. The link I am posting below is an ABC News radio broadcast with Taylor Grant on July 8th, 1947. I think most people still listened to the radio back then, so this was equivalent to a mainstream ABC news show today.

Listen to the sources of the information. ABC news isn't just going to go on the air and report about a crashed disc unless they knew it was coming from credible sources like the military. He says things like "The Army Air Force has announced..." "Army officers say..." ABC doesn't just get their information from some random yokel in Roswell, they get their information straight from the military themselves. The 509th Atomic Bomb Group headquarters at Roswell even reported that it received one of the disks.

It just so happens that they were reporting the truth to the media at first, but later changed their story with a ridiculous explanation and gullible people like you believe it...

Here's the news soundclip:

roswellproof.homestead.com...

And also, just because some guy claims he didn't see anything doesn't mean others didn't. Maybe he's the one who's lying...

Originally posted by Access Denied
You're kidding right? Do you honestly think if it wasn't for all the people who've lied over the years about what happened in Roswell in 1947 anybody would bother to go there?

It's not just the locals who lied. Remember that the Air Force also lied, a few times... They had a huge part to play in creating the myth because of their lies.

How many tourists have been forced to Roswell and forced to spend their money? I'd like to see the place, just to say that I have been - regardless of the truth!

I've got no problem with Roswell becoming the UFO "Capital of the World" as a result of what has, for better or worse, become part of their history. What I do have a problem with is the people who continue to lie or attempt to further obfuscate the truth in order to profit from it somehow.

I have more problems with governments and the military spending billions of dollars, propping up research and developments companies, with the sole intent of building killing machines.

If tourists want to visit a little town to enjoy a myth, so be it.

Well it does say that the $35 M goes to the town of Roswell. I was there back in about 1990 and it was a very poor town, it looked like to me. Not much employment opportunities.
If it goes to the town, it's for a good cause, right? How is this different from any other "tourist attraction" where people pay money?

Originally posted by Diplomat
ABC doesn't just get their information from some random yokel in Roswell, they get their information straight from the military themselves.

Your ignorance is showing here, actually Lt. Haut only went to two radio stations and papers in Roswell. He didn’t make a formal press release over the AP (Associated Press) wire which he had access to in his office. What you need to ask yourself is why not? ABC and everybody else got the story from the local press, not the military!

Originally posted by Diplomat
It just so happens that they were reporting the truth to the media at first, but later changed their story with a ridiculous explanation and gullible people like you believe it...

So what you’re telling me is you believe the government without question only if they’re telling you what you want to hear… and you call ME gullible???

Man, I hope for your sake that tin foil hat you’re wearing isn’t leaking and they already got to you!!!

News flash… it was a botched cover story! The press reports even said “no details of the disc were revealed”… hmm now what could they possibly be trying to hide?

In 1947 “flying saucers” didn’t mean “alien spaceships”!!!

The term had been used for the FIRST TIME only two weeks earlier!

Originally posted by Diplomat
And also, just because some guy claims he didn't see anything doesn't mean others didn't. Maybe he's the one who's lying...

LOL how did I know you’d say that? Only problem is it’s not just one guy… it’s a LOT MORE guys!!! I think maybe deep down you Roswellians know you’ve been had but you’re just too stubborn to admit it.

Originally posted by tezzajw
It's not just the locals who lied. Remember that the Air Force also lied, a few times... They had a huge part to play in creating the myth because of their lies.

I disagree. It seems everybody in 1947 accepted the Air Force’s explanation (screw up) and went about their lives and didn’t think twice about it. It wasn’t until Stanton Friedman resurrected it 30 years later and used a bunch of bogus poorly vetted “witnesses” to create mistrust and further his own agenda… “Cosmic Watergate!”

Originally posted by tezzajw
How many tourists have been forced to Roswell and forced to spend their money? I'd like to see the place, just to say that I have been - regardless of the truth!

[snip]

If tourists want to visit a little town to enjoy a myth, so be it.

Good point. I agree… caveat emptor

By the way, I grew up in New Mexico and have been through Roswell many times and unless you’re into Alien blow-up dolls, you might be a little disappointed. Nearby White Sands (especially at sunset) and Carlsbad Caverns are definitely worth the trip though…

Originally posted by forestlady
If it goes to the town, it's for a good cause, right? How is this different from any other "tourist attraction" where people pay money?

Right but when the people running the main attraction (originally Haut and now his daughter) knowingly release a book for example containing false information to create controversy and attention that’s fraud in my book. Even though an alien spaceship didn’t crash there, I think people will still come to see “where it all started” and the UFO buffs will still gather there every year. It’s totally unnecessary and it could actually end up ruining it for the whole town.

Later,

AD

Originally posted by Access Denied

Originally posted by tezzajw
It's not just the locals who lied. Remember that the Air Force also lied, a few times...

I disagree. It seems everybody in 1947 accepted the Air Force’s explanation (screw up) and went about their lives and didn’t think twice about it.

Then why did the Air Force later claim that it was a Mogul Balloon instead of a Weather Balloon? Is that not a lie from the Air Force, even if it was a lie made in the interest of national security?

The Air Force had a hand in creating the myth due to its own share of lies.

Originally posted by tezzajw
Then why did the Air Force later claim that it was a Mogul Balloon instead of a Weather Balloon? Is that not a lie from the Air Force, even if it was a lie made in the interest of national security?

Well, that's really just a clarification of the truth isn’t it? Does it really matter what the balloon was actually for? Nobody cared in 1947… what changed? What changed is 30 years later is apparently somebody saw an opportunity to open up old wounds for their own benefit.

Originally posted by tezzajw
The Air Force had a hand in creating the myth due to its own share of lies.

I see what you’re trying to say but I see little if no evidence that the Air Force was “nefariously involved” in any sort of official capacity after 1947 to obscure the “truth” about what happened in Roswell. The real responsibility lies with a few key individuals… those who pressed for a “truth” that didn’t exist and continued to do so when due diligence could have prevented it but chose greed instead… and those who encouraged it for whatever personal reasons/shortcomings they had.

That's my $0.02 anyway...

Originally posted by Access Denied
Well, that's really just a clarification of the truth isn’t it? Does it really matter what the balloon was actually for?

I see what you’re trying to say but I see little if no evidence that the Air Force was “nefariously involved” in any sort of official capacity after 1947 to obscure the “truth” about what happened in Roswell.

The truth doesn't need to be clarified, it stands as the truth, no matter what. The Air Force did lie about the nature of what crashed at Roswell. So, it did have a part to play in creating the myth, as it was another major player that lied.

I also see what you're saying though. I'm not saying the Air Force lied to conceal a crashed alien vehicle. I don't know what the AF's reasons were for its deception, however, clearly, the AF told some fibs.