From: mred@perth.DIALix.oz.au (Michael Richley Redshaw)

Hi Folks,
I clipped the following from the Apr 23/95 issue of the Sunday Times (Perth, West Australia) . Its the first mention of the film that I have seen in the mainstream press over here!


Titled_UFO_ALERT__________________________________
By Marcus Casey.(New York)

In JUNE 1947 a mysterious object disintegrated above New Mexico and its Pieces scattered across the spectacular desert near the town of Roswell.

They never really came to rest. Instead they formed the most the most unsettling and disturbing event - "The Roswell Incident" - in the lives of dozens of people convinced the object was a craft piloted by aliens.

They became true believers of extraterrestrial life.

For others the event had meant a lifetime proclaiming the UFO belief a case of phoney baloney. It was actually a military surveillance balloon which prematurely fell to earth.

That doesn't ring true to people like Major Jesse Marcel, an air force officer at the scene, rancher Bill Brazel whose land it fell on, or Loretta Proctor who saw the scene before the military cleaned it up, and plenty of others since.

To them, the military should be called Baloney Incorporated, a body which has spent 48 years denying the world a truth it first heralded in a press release which cooked the globes newswires in minutes.

That happened after Lieutenant Walter Haut, of the USAF base at Roswell, was ordered to write the release and distribute it, by foot, to local radio stations and newspapers.

"The many rumors regarding the flying disk became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomber Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Airfield, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disk through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County," the statement began.

Three hours later a correction was issued from a deluged Regional Headquarters. The flying disk was a weather balloon, a more senior air force commander said.

The issue was debated and went to rest until it flared again in 1978 when retired major marcel announced a true UFO contact incident was covered up by the military which wanted to exploit the technology it had found.

Now the Roswell Incident and the alleged cover up are back in the mainstream news after English rock promoter Ray Santilly announced he'd purchased secret 16mm film of the craft and its dead alien pilots.

The film will be aired for the first time at the Sheffield Hallam University in August and possibly on the BBC shortly after. Not only has the upcoming event set off Roswell speculation again but its divided the true believers.

Don Berliner, who wrote the book "Crash at Corona" - Corona was the nearest village to the crash site - has tried all year to view the film and offer his expertise has not heard back from Santilly or his supporters.

"If you had what amounts to the most important piece of film footage in human history in your possession, one which proves the existence of alien life, why would you wait so long to show it?" asked Santilly, a director of the Fund For UFO Research in Washington.

"A lot of us here in the US want to be involved to offer our expertise in examining the footage. I know I could tell at a glance if the footage of the craft is correct, just by the surrounding terrain."

But Mr Santilly and the BBC have been very evasive about this. Why?

Philip Mantle, of the British UFO Research Association, has seen it and is convinced the black and whit film, about 2 hours worth in 14 canisters, is authentic.

He claims it shows the disk and an autopsy of a slender alien lit by lamplight in a tent set up in the desert.

The alien has a slender head with no nose of ears, but it does have large oval eyes. Much of it is obscured.

He told British reporters recently: "We had heard stories that a photographer was flown into the area after the crash and was flown out again soon after.

"Now it seems he was a movie camera-man. He is alive and we know his name and he is willing, in due course, to testify.

"He took his own copy of the film and he wants to sell it now because he is living in poverty and wants to contribute to his grand-daughters wedding."

An unnamed 80-year-old photographer? Secret film never heard of before in the most high profile UFO incident on record? Doubting true believers with expert knowledge denied access?

It sounds as fishy as little green men travelling to earth from afar. But people who were there at the time saw materials they'd never seen before. Author Berliner says they hope the film will vindicate a belief so long ridiculed.

"I have talked many times to Major Marcel, one of the officers despatched to Brazel's ranch to collect samples of the debris from the disks crash site," Berliner says.

"To this day, he has seen nothing like it. It was like household foil, but much lighter and very very much stronger." He could not cut it, tear it, burn it or puncture it. When he crumpled it into a ball, it straightened itself out without any wrinkles remaining. Back at the air base he hit it with a sledge hammer and nothing happened.

"He also collected little " I " beams just under an inch(2.5cm) in width and 18 inches(45cm) in length. Across the interface were raised symbols in odd pink and purples. They were geometric, probably alien, geometric shapes."

Loretta Proctor is now 80 and still lives on her remote cattle ranch outside Roswell, New Mexico. She and husband Floyd visited their nieghbor, Bill Brazel,just after he found the debris scattered over 20ha of his ranch.

"I know theres something out there. They're still pulling the wool over our eyes - its just a cover up. As far as I am concerned, it was a UFO. I don't think it was anything they had here on earth."

Today Roswell is to UFO experts and believers what Lords is to the cricket fan. A museum was set up documenting the mystery. Major Marcel and the press release writer, Walter Haut work there.

They know what officially happened. After clearing two carloads of samples from the crash, the area was saturated with soldiers who picked the area bare of the debris.

It was taken into military custody, locked and stored - rumoured to be at high-tech military labs in Dayton, Ohio - and all files relating to it are stamped Top Secret and Classified.

All of which added intrigue to a simple mystery they believed involved aliens. From 1978 the incident kept getting bigger, until an official inquiry was launched last year.

Congressman Steven Schiff initiated the inquiry by the Govt's Independent General Accounting Office, and the air force released a subsequent report which only added spice.

While the GAO's overall report wont be released until July, the air force said it was finally coming clean:It was a spy project on the Soviet Union

"It said the air force research did not locate or develop any information that the Roswell Incident was a UFO event. The most likely source of the wreckage was from Project Mogul balloon trains."

These were early versions of spy satellites which carried instruments designed to float high above the USSR and record the early explosions in the soviet nuclear bomb program. The foil was made in a New York toy factory and was part of an anti- radar shield, the report said. The " I " beams were plain old pieces of metal with codes on them.

But the reports language was full of "most likely," "probably" and "possibly," which is petrol to a true believer's fire and their belief something else, something unworldly, was involved.

The film planned for August gives them more hope. They've waited for 47 years, so they can wait for months more. They've been called loonies for a long time, but they're ordinary folk with a firm belief. And knowledge of what makes the world go round.

"There was a film unit at the base and one of them could have taken the film and kept it," Walter Haut said last week. "What I cant understand is why they haven't cashed in before now. I have always believed an alien craft crashed here but I also believe in big green dollars. Everyone has their price."