Free Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups by Charlotte Greig

Gemstone Files have any serious credibility at all? Well, some of the many theories that are bandied about in their pages do bear consideration. That there was some kind of connection between JFK and the Mafia, for instance, seems certain. Overall though, the Files are clearly written by someone who had a few nuggets of inside knowledge, but proceeded to put two and two together and make a million. As for whether the real author was the mysterious Roberts, or whether Brussell or Caruana was actually the author of the Files, remains open to speculation. Whoever the author was, though, the Gemstone Files are ultimately an entertaining and remarkably influential work of fiction.

F LYING S AUCERS: T HE R OSWELL I NCIDENT
    The Roswell Incident of June 1947 remains one of the most intriguing episodes in the history of UFO research. For many, it is the most persuasive evidence we have that alien beings exist, that they travel about the cosmos in spacecraft and that they once landed here on Earth.
    The story began in 1947 when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold claimed that he had seen several objects flying "like geese" through the sky near Mount Rainier, Washington. He described them "moving like a saucer would if it skimmed across the water". The journalist reporting the story coined the term "flying saucer" to describe the craft and this has been used informally ever since to denote UFOs – unidentified flying objects.
    Whether such objects exist, and whether Arnold was telling the truth when he made the claim that day, has been the subject of much speculation over the years. For what happened a few weeks afterwards confirmed, in many people's minds, that aliens had indeed visited our planet and that the American government, for reasons of its own, tried to hush up the story.
    E XTRA-TERRESTRIAL CRASH LANDING?
In early July 1947, a rancher named William "Mack" Brazel was riding out over land near Corona, New Mexico when he noticed a large amount of strange-looking debris scattered about. He informed Sheriff Wilcox of Chaves County who, thinking this must be to do with military exercises, passed the information on to the Army Air Force base at Roswell. Major Jesse Marcel, the base intelligence officer, was instructed to examine the debris. Meanwhile, a local newspaper published the story, reporting that a "flying saucer" had landed on the ranch (they also claimed that it had "been captured", which was a complete fabrication). The matter was then referred to the United States Army Air Force research laboratories, who issued a statement to the effect that the debris was not a flying saucer but the remains of a high altitude weather balloon with a radar attachment made of aluminium and balsa wood, that was being used for State purposes.
    After the sighting in New Mexico, the press picked up the story and many newspapers across the United States published more or less lurid accounts of it. Public interest ran high and various other sightings were reported during the summer of 1947. However, the Army's insistence that the wreckage was not a crashed or captured flying saucer but simply the remains of a weather balloon eventually began to quell press and public interest in the subject.
    T HE EVIDENCE
The Roswell Incident, as it came to be called, looked destined to slip into obscurity for many years, but in 1978 a UFO researcher named Stanton Friedman began to delve into it once again. While on a lecture tour, he received a call from Jesse Marcel, who had handled the affair back in 1947. However, Marcel could not remember the date on which the incident took place. With the help of co-researcher William Moore, Friedman began to find out more and eventually unearthed newspaper clippings reporting the story. Then the pair began to ask questions. What kind of weather balloon could yield such strange debris? Brazel and others had said that the material they had found was extremely light and could not be burned or otherwise destroyed. Why would