Welcome to Part 2 of our Roswell Investigation!
Above photo courtesy of Fort Worth Star-Telegram Photograph Collection, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library, Arlington, Texas.
In February 1978, decades after the events of the Roswell Crash, a UFO researcher named Stanton Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel. He was the only person known to have taken the journey with the debris from Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) to Fort Worth Army Air Field (FWAAF).
Friedman was waiting to be interviewed by a Louisiana television station, and overheard someone talking about Marcel. They said he was living nearby, and had claimed to have handled the wreckage of a UFO. Friedman went to Marcel to interview him, and Marcel still maintained the debris was extraterrestrial.
After Marcel's interview, Friedman dug deeper, found more witnesses, and later declared Roswell to be a coverup of "cosmic Watergate" proportions. Marcel's first filmed interview was included in the November 1979 release of "UFO's Are Real," which was co-written by Friedman.
On February 28, 1980 the National Enquirer, a sensationalist magazine, picked up Marcel's story and ran with it. It brough large-scale attention to Marcel's claims, and even more attention to the Roswell Incident itself.
Later that year in September, Marcel was interviewed for the TV series In Search Of... where he described the events, and discussed his role in the 1947 press conference.
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They wanted some comments from me, but I wasn't at liberty to do that. So, all I could do is keep my mouth shut. And General Ramey is the one who discussed – told the newspapers, I mean the newsman, what it was, and to forget about it.
'It is nothing more than a weather observation balloon,' [Ramey said]. Of course, we both knew differently.
Major Jesse Marcel // September 1980
Marcel gave one more interview — to HBO's America Undercover. It aired in August of 1985.
The Roswell Incident (1980)
Marcel's story was featured in the book The Roswell Incident, which was co-written by Charles Berlitz (who also wrote The Bermuda Triangle) and William Moore. This book dominated the Roswell conversation for years, and included interviews from 25 separate people close to the incident. Here are the most notable parts of the book:
Marcel reiterates he believes the debris is material "[not] made on this earth."
New interviews from: Bill Brazel, the son of Mac Brazel; a neighbor, Floyd Proctor; and Walt Whitman Jr., the son of W.E. Whitman, who had interviewed Brazel. Whitman Jr. suggested that the material Brazel found was of unusual strength, and certainly inconsistent with a weather balloon designed to disintegrate.
The book claims that the debris Marcel is seen posing with is not the debris that Brazel found, but that it was switched out at some point to aid in the coverup. This make sense, as the original press statement put out by the RAAF said the debris was a "flying disc," which was later walked back after it started a UFO craze. If they were engaging in a cover-up, they would have to swap out the real debris with something ordinary.
The Roswell Incident also describes military efforts intended to discredit and "counteract the growing hysteria towards flying saucers." There are also two instances of witness intimidation mentioned —including Mac Brazel's incarceration.
