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

they lie about such a thing? And why was the whole affair cloaked in such secrecy? The Army seemed to have something to hide – what was it?
    The story that launched a thousand saucers: the
Daily Record
of 8 July 1947 reports the Roswell 'incident'.
    L ITTLE GREEN MEN
Friedman and Moore interviewed a teletype operator named Lydia Sleppy. She had worked at a New Mexico radio station in 1947 and had claimed that the FBI had interrupted the transmission of the "flying saucer" story. This seemed to tally with Marcel's account, in which he had stated that the army had suppressed information about the strange debris that he had seen with his own eyes and that the "weather balloon" story had been a cover up. A retired Air Force brigadier general called Arthur Exon then came out of the woodwork. He told UFO researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt that some strange debris had been brought in while he had been working at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in 1947. It was lightweight and apparently indestructible. There were also rumours circulating around the base, he said, that bodies had been recovered out of a "craft from space".
    Another retired Air Force officer, Brigadier General Thomas Dubose, alleged in interviews that the Roswell incident had been treated with the greatest secrecy and that the White House had been involved. He also confirmed that the "weather balloon" story had been fabricated. Other senior ex-officers then emerged with similar tales to tell: they had either seen the bodies of alien creatures who had died when the craft crashed or they had heard of their existence.
    Much of this evidence was dismissed by sceptics as second hand. Yet there remained disturbing anomalies in the government's weather balloon story, so – not surprisingly – questions continued to be asked.
    S ECRET SURVEILLANCE ?
Several theories were advanced. The first, and in the opinion of many people, the most persuasive, was that the debris was surveillance equipment that was being used in a top secret government project designed to spy on Russian nuclear activity, called Mogul. The incident needed to be hushed up because of the clandestine nature of the operation, which is why the army came up with the story about the weather balloon. However, this theory does not explain why the material found on the ranch was so unusual, or why the army would be using such material. It was also pointed out that the army had previously been unconcerned about people stumbling across the evidence of balloons and other army equipment found scattered in the desert: but this time they rushed to hide it.
    Next came the idea that the incident could be attributed to a nuclear accident on the part of the army but, once again, there were problems with this explanation. For a start, the army had no assembled nuclear weapons in its arsenal at the time and there were no other nuclear accidents during the period in question, as public records now attest. Critics also argued that if the army had lost a nuclear weapon in the desert they would surely not have waited for a passing rancher to let them know where it was!
    Area 51 is still a restricted site, a fact pointed out by conspiracy theorists who believe the government has something to hide.
    S O WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
Because of the government secrecy surrounding the issue, a number of UFO researchers have come to the conclusion that some kind of covert activity must have taken place. Some believe that there was an alien landing and that the United States government simply denied the fact in order to prevent panic among the public. Others suggest that the government has access to alien technology but refuses to admit it. There has even been speculation that this was either a crash between two alien spacecraft or a crash involving a spy craft which secretly experimented on live human beings. This latter theory, advanced by Nick Redfern in his book
Body Snatchers in the Desert
, has gained credibility within the