Roswell Revealed

by Kevin Ahearn

The SCI-FI Channel and its new publisher, Pocket Books, are touting “The Roswell Dig Diaries,” which will “reveal never-before-seen information” about the “incident” of nearly sixty summers ago, which many claim had extraterrestrials crashing to earth and the U.S. Government engaging in a clandestine conspiracy to “reverse engineer” alien technology.

Debunkers insist that the “incident” was a simple balloon accident exploited by “eyewitnesses” who keep changing their stories and by opportunists who have never stopped promoting theirs.

All are light years from the truth. The Roswell “incident” was a turning point in history that preserved the future as we know it. It is not about two alien bodies or three or four, but tens of millions of human lives. If not for the events of that pivotal July week, you might not have been born to read this. And if you were, perhaps not in English.

If an alien spaceship had trekked across the Milky Way in 1947, it would have found our earth to be a dangerous place. A devastating war had ended only two years before; and instead of the sought-after peace, the planet was divided into two armed camps, each dominated by a superpower whose leaders believed that World War Three was inevitable, if not imminent.

In earth orbit, the alien craft might have flown over the planet’s largest country: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Its western half ruined by war, the nation had rallied to defeat the Nazi invaders and “liberate” all of Eastern Europe. Dictator Josef Stalin, a heartless butcher who had murdered millions of his own people in a reign of terror, was eager to expand his ill-gotten empire yet paranoid that the anti-Communist nations (soon to form NATO) were plotting to “roll back the Russians” and attack the Soviet Motherland.

Flying west, the alien craft would have passed over Europe, struggling to recover from World War II and fearful of the Russians, who had ruthlessly occupied half the continent. Would Stalin unleash his mighty Red Army and conquer all of Europe as Hitler had done only eight years before?

Across a large sea called the Atlantic Ocean, the cosmic travelers might have looked down on earth’s only hope for lasting freedom and democracy, the United States. Untouched by war and on the eve of great prosperity, many Americans were afraid yet another conflict would again send their sons, brothers and fathers overseas to fight and die by the tens of thousands.

From high in space, would curious aliens have been able to determine that the United States possessed the one weapon that could deter the Communist threat? Could their sensors have detected lethal radiation still lingering over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, each destroyed with a single bomb less than two years before? Could beings from another planet have concluded that the hopes of the Free World hinged on the atomic bomb and the only technology capable of delivering it: the 509th Bomb Wing at Roswell, New Mexico?

Had the alien spacecraft descended for a closer look, its occupants would have been appalled at the condition of America’s once elite bomber force. Could alien technology have concluded that the United States’ atomic arsenal consisted of a fleet of aging propeller-driven aircraft and fewer than half a dozen bombs?

“The atomic bomb can only be used against people with weak nerves,” said Josef Stalin, who did not have weak nerves.

Truman was stuck between a bomb and a madman. Western Europe was vastly outnumbered in troops, tanks and aircraft; if the Red Army charged through, the American President would be forced to launch a nuclear first strike at the heart of the Soviet Union: Moscow.

For the flyers of the 509th Bomb Wing at Roswell, an attack on Moscow would be a suicide mission. The atomic bombings of Japan had been unopposed “milk runs.” Stalin’s Russia was a different story. Between the East European “Iron Curtain” and the Kremlin lay a bristling network of radar stations, antiaircraft batteries and fighter bases — PVO Strany — the combined Red Air Defense Forces. Unlike Communist spies so effective in the United States, the newly created Central Intelligence Agency knew next to nothing about Soviet defenses and was desperate to find out by any means, and at any cost, necessary.

What the 509th had to have was a complete and current blueprint of PVO Strany: the location and capabilities of its radar stations, fighter aircraft and antiaircraft guns. Exploiting any weaknesses, the Roswell navigators could chart a “yellow brick road” to the Red capital.

But how? Espionage? If James Bond had been real, seven hundred “007’s” wouldn’t have been able to make a dent in such a massive undertaking. Reconnaissance satellites had yet to be dreamt of, and high-altitude spy planes were still on the drawing board.

Balloons? Project Mogul was ostensibly intended to develop constant-level weather balloons. Actually it was intended to develop a way to place low-frequency acoustic microphones at high altitudes to monitor possible Soviet nuclear detonations. Project Mogul would prove to be an expensive and impractical failure. Other tests had proven that recon balloons were a one-way ticket to nowhere.

That became the whole idea! In the spring of 1947, the 509th Bomb Wing had begun a series of stratospheric balloon flights over New Mexico. Then something went wrong: a crash at a nearby ranch.

So why did the Army Air Corps announce that it had “captured a flying disc”? At stake was national security at the highest level. Exposed at this crucial phase, the greatest intelligence-gathering mission in history would never have gotten off the ground.

The “flying disc” hoopla was quickly put to rest. For years after, the “incident” attracted little attention. In 1966, the leading UFO groups — NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) and APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) — did not even mention Roswell on their lists of “most important UFO cases” submitted for the Condon Committee Report, a University of Colorado study of UFO’s commissioned by the Air Force.

It was not until after the Warren Commission Report investigating the assassination of JFK and the birth of “conspiracy theories” that Roswell got a second life. Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra and the recent “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq” furor caused more and more Americans to doubt the word of their government. But the resurgence of the Roswell “incident” seemed to defy logic: if we couldn’t trust the Federal Government — especially the military — why should anyone believe the Army Air Corps’ “flying disc”? Surely the Pentagon was hiding something. What were they still hiding?

From the day Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office revealed to the press that the “flying disc” was actually “a harmless high-altitude weather balloon,” the Roswell “cover-up” has been in plain sight.

Out of sight, the 509th had been using high-altitude weather balloons for “radio triangulation” experiments. “Friendly” balloons were launched and then tracked by an “enemy” radar station which reported back to “enemy” headquarters. Again and again for weeks on end, the “enemy” communications were monitored by two separate “friendly” listening posts. Repeatedly employing azimuth and range, the location and capabilities of the “enemy” radar station could be narrowed down and confirmed.

What if...?

Such a grand operation first required a “cut-out” sponsor that would bring legitimacy to the scheme and a “cover story” to conceal its true purpose.

Radio Free Europe, created in 1947 to transmit “The Voice of America” to “Communist-enslaved eastern Europe,” was conceived, controlled and bankrolled by the CIA. Under the guise of the newly created U.S. National Security Council, the CIA was directed to “initiate and conduct psychological operations designed to counteract Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities which constitute a threat to world peace.”

In short, anti-Communist propaganda over the air waves. But radio was only the beginning; the sky was the limit. The Roswell radar results were going to take to the air. Hydrogen-filled balloons, many with aluminum radar reflectors attached, carrying two to seven pounds of precious cargo, were launched from western Europe to drift eastward.

Not ten or twenty or hundreds of balloons — from 1951 to 1956, some 350,000 balloons of all types floated over eastern Europe and into Russia, dropping more than 300 million leaflets, posters and books. (Ironically, thousands of balloons aloft coupled with the 1951 release of The Thing and The Day the Earth Stood Still in America, two films that opened with flying saucers landing on earth, resulted in the biggest international UFO “flap” in history.)

The liberal press ate it up. Anti-Communists around the world applauded. The angry Soviets protested. PVO Strany tracked the balloons and alerted aircraft batteries and fighter bases. Thousands were shot down just as the 509th Bomb Group and the CIA had anticipated since the top secret tests had begun at Roswell.

In Germany, Italy, Crete, Iran and Pakistan, listening posts had been set up and staffed by Americans who monitored the Soviet radio signals and “blueprinted” the entire radar defense network, which had been the strategic goal of the balloon armada all along; the airborne propaganda campaign was a cover story.

The atomic “road map” through PVO Strany had been charted. What had been envisioned as an Iron Curtain was revealed to be an incomplete patchwork of obsolete radar stations still under construction and woefully behind the West. By that time, however, the Soviets had their own atomic bomb as well as their first atomic bomber, a bolt-for-bolt copy of the B-29, the same four-engine bomber the 509th had used to drop the first A-bombs on Japan.

Through books, documentaries, TV series, museums, merchandise, and movies, Roswell has flourished as an American myth and moneymaker. In truth, the “incident” is a strung-together collection of cover stories concocted by the Army Air Corps, the United States Air Force, and the Central Intelligence Agency; and it has been exploited by hucksters, hacks and Hollywood. For nearly six decades, so many have been convinced that the American government has been covering up the “flying disc” when all the while it’s been the “flying disc” covering up for the American government.

One can only wonder what space aliens would have made of it.

In 1964, Kevin Ahearn was the youngest airman ever to graduate from the U.S. Air Force’s Communications Intelligence School at Goodfellow AF Base. With a Top Secret Codeword security clearance, he served for three years as a Radio Intercept Analyst in Europe.

For the last three years, he has served as a UFO and Military History “expert” on Allexperts.com. Judged by its users, his ratings in both are “Excellent.”