Mar 5, 2018 05:38 AM
https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018...gists-9596
EXCERPT: . . . there is something splendidly American about the way that a remote city of fifty thousand not known for very much milks the cash cow that didn’t fall to earth. A section of downtown had been blocked off. Businesses vied for the best alien (“or patriotic”) window display. Supplementing a distinctive collection of stores—Alien Invasion, Alien Headz, Alien Stop, Alien Zone—were booths offering alien this, alien that, and alien tat. Vendors sold snacks of any description and snacks beyond description. There were pony rides, a water slide (the temperature was in the nineties), an alien costume contest for pets, and an alien costume contest for humans. [...]
As the Roswell industry grew, clarity shrank, dates blurred, locations went walkabout, saucers changed shape, there was one crash, there were two, the aliens all died, one survived, a local undertaker was asked about the availability of undersized coffins, a “missing” nurse saw more than she should, the military (a mean-eyed, red-headed colonel or captain, a black sergeant) bullied witnesses into silence, evidence was stolen. Documents showing that Eisenhower was briefed were later shown to be forgeries and set off a schism, but were the forgeries created to discredit those who were coming too close to the truth?
As it happens, there probably was a cover-up, of sorts. The U.S. Air Force published two reports in the mid-1990s, just after TheX-Files, a television show that played off (and further popularized) the Roswell myth while weaving it into a dense conspiratorial mix that spread far beyond the small screen, had begun its long run. [...] The first, the exhaustively researched and at times drily amusing *The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction*, brings a touch of much-missed Mission Control rigor as it cuts through the miasma, both pre-modern and post-, which envelops so much of the Roswell debate. If you’ll forgive the spoiler, its writers found “no evidence of any extraterrestrial craft or alien flight crew.” What they did find “[was] . . . a shadowy, formerly Top Secret project, code-named mogul,” involving the launch of “balloon trains” some six-hundred feet long and laden with sensors designed to detect whether the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear device (America’s nuclear weapons monopoly only ended in 1949). Given the secrecy that surrounded mogul, Ramey either didn’t recognize the Roswell wreckage or was unwilling to identify it: either way, he left enough of a gap for the conspiracy theories to seep through.
*The Roswell Report: Case Closed* was a sequel designed to address the question of alien corpses. Rather charitably, it suggests that recollections of these extraterrestrial unfortunates were the result of memories—muddled over the decades—of Air Force anthropomorphic test dummies parachuted from high altitudes over the desert and, separately, two accidents in which Air Force personnel were killed or injured in the late 1950s.
To some, these reports were merely a new twist on an old cover-up. Facts rarely get in the way of a good story or a satisfying cult. The Roswell show rolls on, sporadically spiced up by the rise and fall of ever-more-innovative embellishments and now graced by a hereditary nobility of sorts: at one meeting we were invited to applaud descendants of the principal witnesses, proud to carry a torch that sheds no light. No matter: according to a 2013 survey, roughly a fifth of Americans believe that a saucer crashed near Roswell and the government covered it up. The ufo museum received some two hundred thousand visitors in 2016 and fifteen thousand people reportedly showed up for the seventieth anniversary celebrations...
MORE: https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018...gists-9596
EXCERPT: . . . there is something splendidly American about the way that a remote city of fifty thousand not known for very much milks the cash cow that didn’t fall to earth. A section of downtown had been blocked off. Businesses vied for the best alien (“or patriotic”) window display. Supplementing a distinctive collection of stores—Alien Invasion, Alien Headz, Alien Stop, Alien Zone—were booths offering alien this, alien that, and alien tat. Vendors sold snacks of any description and snacks beyond description. There were pony rides, a water slide (the temperature was in the nineties), an alien costume contest for pets, and an alien costume contest for humans. [...]
As the Roswell industry grew, clarity shrank, dates blurred, locations went walkabout, saucers changed shape, there was one crash, there were two, the aliens all died, one survived, a local undertaker was asked about the availability of undersized coffins, a “missing” nurse saw more than she should, the military (a mean-eyed, red-headed colonel or captain, a black sergeant) bullied witnesses into silence, evidence was stolen. Documents showing that Eisenhower was briefed were later shown to be forgeries and set off a schism, but were the forgeries created to discredit those who were coming too close to the truth?
As it happens, there probably was a cover-up, of sorts. The U.S. Air Force published two reports in the mid-1990s, just after TheX-Files, a television show that played off (and further popularized) the Roswell myth while weaving it into a dense conspiratorial mix that spread far beyond the small screen, had begun its long run. [...] The first, the exhaustively researched and at times drily amusing *The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction*, brings a touch of much-missed Mission Control rigor as it cuts through the miasma, both pre-modern and post-, which envelops so much of the Roswell debate. If you’ll forgive the spoiler, its writers found “no evidence of any extraterrestrial craft or alien flight crew.” What they did find “[was] . . . a shadowy, formerly Top Secret project, code-named mogul,” involving the launch of “balloon trains” some six-hundred feet long and laden with sensors designed to detect whether the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear device (America’s nuclear weapons monopoly only ended in 1949). Given the secrecy that surrounded mogul, Ramey either didn’t recognize the Roswell wreckage or was unwilling to identify it: either way, he left enough of a gap for the conspiracy theories to seep through.
*The Roswell Report: Case Closed* was a sequel designed to address the question of alien corpses. Rather charitably, it suggests that recollections of these extraterrestrial unfortunates were the result of memories—muddled over the decades—of Air Force anthropomorphic test dummies parachuted from high altitudes over the desert and, separately, two accidents in which Air Force personnel were killed or injured in the late 1950s.
To some, these reports were merely a new twist on an old cover-up. Facts rarely get in the way of a good story or a satisfying cult. The Roswell show rolls on, sporadically spiced up by the rise and fall of ever-more-innovative embellishments and now graced by a hereditary nobility of sorts: at one meeting we were invited to applaud descendants of the principal witnesses, proud to carry a torch that sheds no light. No matter: according to a 2013 survey, roughly a fifth of Americans believe that a saucer crashed near Roswell and the government covered it up. The ufo museum received some two hundred thousand visitors in 2016 and fifteen thousand people reportedly showed up for the seventieth anniversary celebrations...
MORE: https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018...gists-9596
