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The Roswell Incident
The Roswell UFO incident involved the recovery of materials near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 which have since become the subject of intense speculation and research. There are widely divergent views on what actually happened, and passionate debate about what evidence can be believed. The United States military maintains that what was recovered was a top-secret research balloon that had crashed. However, UFO researchers believe the wreckage was of a crashed alien craft and that the military covered up the craft's recovery. The incident has evolved into a widely-recognized and referenced pop culture phenomenon, and for some, Roswell is synonymous with UFO and likely ranks as the most famous alleged UFO incident.
In early July 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed "flying disc" from a ranch near Roswell, sparking intense media interest. Later the same day, the Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force stated that in fact, a weather balloon had been recovered by RAAF personnel, rather than a "flying disc." A subsequent press conference was called, featuring debris said to be the crashed object that seemed to confirm the weather balloon description. The case was quickly forgotten and almost completely ignored, even by UFO researchers, for some 30 years. Then, in 1978, Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Maj. Jesse Marcel, who was involved with the original recovery of the debris in 1947. Marcel expressed his belief that the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft. His story circulated through UFO circles, including in some UFO documentaries of the time. In February 1980, The National Enquirer ran its own interview with Marcel, garnering national and worldwide attention for the Roswell incident.
Additional witnesses and reports emerged over the following years. They added significant new details, including claims of a large military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, as many as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis put forth a detailed personal account, wherein he claimed that alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base.
In response to these reports, and after congressional inquiries, the General Accounting Office launched an inquiry and directed the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to conduct an internal investigation. The result was two reports. The first one, released in 1995, concluded that the material reported recovered in 1947 was likely debris from a secret government program called Project Mogul. The second report, released in 1997, addressed the reports of aliens and concluded these reports were likely transformed memories of the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in programs like Project High Dive, conducted in the 1950s. The psychological effects of time compression and confusion about when events occurred explained the discrepancy with the years in question. These reports were dismissed by UFO proponents as being either disinformation or simply implausible, though significant numbers of UFO researchers discount the probability that any alien craft was in fact involved.
By the early 1990s, a new scenario had emerged among some UFO researchers alleging that the original 1947 accounts were almost exclusively cover-ups. Based on the accounts of witnesses given after 1978, some asserted that once word reached military authorities detailing the recovery of a UFO, officials switched the real debris for weather balloon debris in time for the press conference. Then, they assert, officials intimidated Brazel into portraying the material as consistent with a weather balloon during the press conference. They claim that at the same time the press was reporting that a rancher had mistaken a weather balloon for a flying saucer, the military was engaging in a large recovery operation, sealing off large areas and warning civilians to be quiet, in some cases threatening them with death if they dared tell anyone what they saw.
The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which a technologically-superior extraterrestrial society invades Earth with the intent to replace human life, or to enslave it under a colonial system, or in some cases, to use humans as food.
The invasion scenario has been used as an allegory for a protest against military hegemony and the societal ills of the time. Wells' The War of the Worlds is often viewed as an indictment of European colonialism and its "gunboat diplomacy" setting a common theme for future alien invasion stories, that force audiences in Western societies to empathize with the conquered rather than the conqueror.
