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On Friday, July 28, Congressman Steve Schiff of New Mexico issued a press release announcing the long-awaited results of an inquiry into the 1947 Roswell incident, undertaking by the General Accounting Office in January, 1994, at Schiff's request.
Prior to initiating the GAO inquiry, Schiff had tried unsuccessfully to acquire satisfactory information on the Roswell incident from sources in the Department of Defense and the National Archives. In calling for the GAO inquiry, Schiff stated publicly that he had been "given the run-around" and that the Pentagon was acting as if they were trying to hide something.
In numerous public statements, Schiff insisted that he did not expect the Roswell inquiry to turn up evidence of UFOs or aliens, nor was the GAO looking for such evidence. The GAO was charged with determining if military records were improperly handled, or if government funds were improperly spent, in connection with the Roswell incident.
According to the report issued July 28, the GAO found that significant military records pertaining to Roswell appeared to have been destroyed, perhaps over 40 years ago.
Congressman Schiff did not immediately announce what further steps, if any, he planned to take. However, his press announcement made it clear that he was troubled by the GAO finding.
ISCNI*Flash commends Mr. Schiff for his actions thus far, and urges him to press for a wider inquiry into what really happened at Roswell in 1947. The complete text of Mr. Schiff's July 28 press announcement follows:
The 20 page report is the result of constituent information requests to Congressman Schiff and the difficulty he had getting answers from the Department of Defense in the now 48-year-old controversy.
Schiff said important documents, which may have shed more light on what happened at Roswell, are missing. "The GAO report states that the outgoing messages from Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) for this period of time were destroyed without proper authority." Schiff pointed out that these messages would have shown how military officials in Roswell were explaining to their superiors exactly what happened.
"It is my understanding that these outgoing messages were permanent records, which should never have been destroyed. The GAO could not identify who destroyed the messages, or why." But Schiff pointed out that the GAO estimates that the messages were destroyed over 40 years ago, making further inquiry about their destruction impractical.
Documents revealed by the report include an FBI teletype and reference in a newsletter style internal forum at RAAF that refer to a "radar tracking device" -- a reference to a weather balloon. Even though the weather balloon story has since been discredited by the U.S. Air Force, Schiff suggested that the authors of those communications may have been repeating what they were told, rather than consciously adding to what some believe is a "cover up."
"At least this effort caused the Air Force to acknowledge that the crashed vehicle was no weather balloon," Schiff said. "That explanation never fit the fact of high military security used at the time." The Air Force in September, 1994 claimed that the crashed vehicle was a then-classified device to detect evidence of possible Soviet nuclear testing.
Schiff also praised the efforts of the GAO, describing their work as "professional, conscientious and thorough."
A two-page letter discussing a related investigation into "Majestic 12" was also delivered.
A copy of the GAO report may be obtained by calling (202) 512-6000 and referencing Document number GAO/NSIAD-95-187.
[The following is excerpted from a transcript of a radio program which was printed in the ORTK (Operation Right to Know) Bulletin No. 9, dated July 10, 1995. The transcript, prepared by Don Ratch, is taken from a late-night radio broadcast that occurred on May 5, 1995 on station WOL-AM in Washington D.C., also simulcast on station WOLB-AM in Baltimore, Maryland. The show is called "UFOs Saturday Night," hosted by Elaine Douglass. Guests on the show that night included Stanley V. McDaniel, Erol Torun, Keith Morgan, Daniel Drasin and Donna Tietze. Ms. Tietze claims to be a former employee of NASA in Houston, Texas. Her testimony was the focus of the following discussion.]
Elaine Douglass: This is Elaine Douglass, WOL News-Talk Network, our show is "UFOs Saturday Night," and... our topic is the Face on Mars. We have a new guest on the air with us, Donna Tietze. Donna, you are also with three scientists who are on the air with us and that would be Stan McDaniel from California, Erol Torun from the East Coast and Dan Drasin in Colorado... Donna is in Houston, Texas and kind enough to join us tonight to tell us some very interesting things she observed while working at NASA. Donna is an educator and she is working on her Masters in Education. In the past, Donna, as I understand it, you held a position for 15 years with a contractor at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. You were a photo technician?
Donna Tietze: Correct!
E.D.: Donna, welcome to "UFOs Saturday night." Tell me and tell everyone the incident that you recall. As they say in the law court, did there come a time when you walked into a photo lab and someone told you something quite astounding? What happened that day?
D.T.: Yes, Elaine, that's true... I worked at NASA throughout [the] Apollo missions, and I did leave NASA at the time the space shuttles began. I worked in building 8 in the photo lab. I had a secret clearance so I thought I could go anywhere in the building. And I did go into one area that was a restricted area. In this area they developed pictures taken from satellites and also all of the missions, the Apollo missions, flight missions. I went in and I was talking to one of the photographers and developers, and he was putting together a mosaic, which is a lot of photos, smaller photos, into a larger photo pattern. And while I was in there, I was trying to learn new methods and new things about the whole organization, and I was looking at the pictures. And he directed my attention to one area. He said, "Look at that." I looked and there was a round oval shape. Well, it was very white, circular shape of a dot, and it was black and white photography, so I asked him if that was a spot on the emulsion. And he said, "Well, I can't tell you, but spots on the emulsion do not leave round circles of shadows."
E.D.: So there was a shadow on the ground?
D.T.: Right, a round shadow! And I noticed that there were pine trees. Now I don't know where this area was... I didn't see outline of the continent. But I did notice that there was a shadow under this white dot, and I also noticed that the trees were casting the shadow in the same direction as this shadow of the circle of this aerial phenomena, because it was higher than the trees but not too much higher than the trees. But it was close to the ground, and it was spherical but slightly elongated, not very much but slightly. I then said, "Is it a UFO?" And he said, "Well, I can't tell you." And then I asked him, "What are you going to do with this piece of information?" And he said, "Well, we have to airbrush these things out before we sell these photographs to the public." So I realized at that point that there is a procedure set up to take care of this type of information from the public.
E.D.: ...Now Donna, there is another matter that you learned about when you were there at NASA. I believe this was through a third party, a person that you were spendng some time with who was a fellow NASA employee?
D.T.: Right, in fact after we talked, I thought about another incident with a guard that I would like to convey too, that's very important. This man that I had dated was in quarantine with the astronauts when they had come back from the moon, and I had talked to him about seeing this saucer (satellite photos) and asked him if he had heard anything about that. And he told me that every astronaut, every moon trip had been followed by craft, by saucers, that every one of them, every astronaut that went to the moon... they all had seen it, and all had been told to keep quiet about it, and they were threatened with jail and their whole retirement, everything taken away from them... This man told me that if I ever told that he said it, that he would deny it, that he would never admit that he told me all of that.
On July 6 and 7 at the Hilton Hotel in Las Cruces, New Mexico, some 200 members and friends of the White Sands Pioneer Group got together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of White Sands Missile Range (originally called White Sands Proving Ground), where America's space program began. White Sands was officially established on July 9, 1945; and the first missile was launched there on September 23, 1945.
The old-timers who tested America's first rockets toasted each other at a banquet dinner at the Hilton on July 6. Among the guests were Magnus VonBraun, younger brother of the legendary German rocket scientist Werner VonBraun, and Col. John Stapp, a rocket sled pilot who broke the sound barrier. Also present were former astronauts Pete Conrad, John Young and Harrison Schmidt. Conrad today is flight manager of the Delta Clipper (single stage to orbit, or SSTO) rocket program, and a test launch of the Delta Clipper was a highlight of the festivities. But when the lights came down for the keynote speech at the banquet that night, before the gathered dignitaries, military brass and rocket jockies, up to the microphone came none other than Paul J. Davids, executive producer and co-author of the 1994 television film "Roswell." His topic: UFOs.
Paul has given ISCNI*Flash a personal account of his experience at this extraordinary gathering. Here's how he tells it:
"On July 6th, I was the keynote banquet speaker at the 50 year reunion of the White Sands Missile Range Pioneer Group. The attendees included representatives of the Department of Defense, Army, Air Force, Navy, people connected with Los Alamos, Sandia Labs, Lockheed Martin, NASA, private space program development, etc. I was asked to come to speak to this group about the Roswell Incident, UFOs and ETs. I spoke for a little over one hour and showed many video clips and slides. I stated that my talk was a plea to 'open a door' to a new policy on this subject, a more open policy that would leave the days of the coverup behind -- and I spent some time establishing the nature of the coverup.
"After disarming the audience with the observation that perhaps I should be tarred and feathered as the Hollywood producer who took the story of New Mexico's most famous UFO incident and filmed it in Arizona, I delicately compared the impasse in the way UFOs are regarded to other crises and 'blind spots' toward scientific data, from Galileo, Darwin and Tesla to Velikovsky. Then we jumped into some powerful Roswell testimony, seen on video -- statements of Jesse Marcel ('it was not made on this earth'), Barry Goldwater on how Curtis LeMay thwarted his efforts to get to the bottom of the UFO and crashed spaceship controversy, and widows of Roswell servicemen who repeated deathbed statements of their military husbands about the Roswell crash having been of something otherworldly, with alien bodies. I showed Michael Lindemann's recounting of Victor Marchetti's words in 'The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence' about the reasons for the coverup, plus stunning footage of Area 51 that showed a craft in a 'falling leaf' descent pattern, which has been described for flying saucers since about 1947.
"Banquet attendees were also shown excerpts of Disney's recent documentary that was introduced by CEO Michael Eisner, called 'Alien Encounters [from New Tomorrowland].' That documentary was hard-hitting and basically said, 'They're here, some in authority have known it for a fact for 50 years, and get ready for the floodgates of information to open in the foreseeable future as policy changes are around the corner.'
"I ended the presentation with a key scene from the great classic film 'Inherit the Wind' starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, about the famous Scopes trial concerning the banning of teaching of evolution in the schools in Tennessee. In the scene, Spencer Tracy (playing a role based on Clarence Darrow) declares that the trial is about the right of a man to 'think,' and that all he cares about is 'Truth' -- and 'Truth' may be a lot closer to Darwin than the 6-day creation scenario of Genesis. I drew the analogy starkly: we're at another watershed moment in history, similar to the impact that the theory of evolution had on society. When the ET/UFO/extraterrestrial artifact information begins to see the light of day, by way of leaks extending to declassification and open acknowledgment, at that moment we enter a new intellectual era. My implication was that it may be soon upon us.
"Reaction to the speech (which was professionally videotaped, and which I hope to make available in the coming two months or so) was interesting. There was an immediate rush of congratulations, of heartfelt thanks, of requests to take my picture standing next to the U.S. flag, etc. The next day it became clear there were some frowning naysayers in the group. There were objections from some skeptics and from those subscribing to the 'But we know none of this is real' school of thought. Regardless, I seemed to make many new friends."
Paul J. Davids
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Thousands of Images Also Available on CD-ROM
The only acknowledged space mission to the moon in the last 20 years was that of the unmanned satellite Clementine, a classified mission launched under the joint auspices of NASA and BMDO (Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, or the current incarnation of the Star Wars program) to thoroughly map the moon using the latest high-resolution cameras.
Some researchers are convinced that evidence of alien activity is plainly visible on the moon and has shown up in NASA pictures dating back to the mid-1960s. That's the only logical reason, they suggest, for Clementine to have been classified.
Whatever truth there might be in such claims, a large number of photos
from the Clementine mission are now available for public viewing on the
Worldwide Web. If you have a web browser, you can see for yourself. The URL
(or Web address) is: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/clib
Chances are you won't find evidence of alien activity. But happy browsing!
And if you REALLY want to see lots of moon pictures from Clementine, and you happen to have a CD-ROM reader on your computer, we've got more good news for you!
The National Space Science Data Center now has 45 CDs of Clementine images available, and another 43 CDs are expected to be available shortly. These CDs contain "raw data," shots taken in sequence as the satellite orbited the moon. In about one year, larger "mosaic" shots will also be available on CD. But if you just can't wait, here's how to order.
Each CD costs only $6.00. However, there is a $30 "request fee" for each order, which covers postage, handling and "paperwork." The request fee is the same no matter how many CDs you order at a time. So, one CD will cost you $36.00, and ten (ordered together) will cost you $96.00, etc. You can even order the entire set of 88 CDs at once (total cost, $558), and the Data Center will ship you the 43 CDs that aren't yet available as soon as they become available.
You can place your order by phone, fax or email using your VISA,
Mastercard or American Express card. The phone number is 301-286-6695; the
fax number is 301-286-1635; and the email address is:
request@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov
Bonus: The National Space Science Data Center also has thousands of photo images from other space missions to the moon, Mars, etc., all of which are described in a catalog that you can get for free by calling 301-286-6695.
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