Alien Affairs

Public Information Officer, Walter Haut, after hearing Marcel’s account of what he had seen on the Foster ranch issued a press release. The Roswell Daily Record’s headline on Tuesday, July 8, 1947, read, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Area.”

When the paper hit Colonel Blanchard’s stoop that morning the townsfolk thought the 509th Bomb Group had tested an atomic device. While Haut was being verbally sodomized by the colonel, Counter-Intelligence Officer Cravitt began embellishing a cock-and-bull story about weather balloons, Provost Marshal Easley had Mack Brazel arrested and thrown into the brig, Marcel supervised the collection of every piece of the craft and crew, and had the vile smelling, ailing alien strapped to a gurney as Commanding General Roger Ramey was en route from Fort Worth.

On Ramey’s arrival he met first with Cravitt to assess the security situation. The gaff of the first press release aside, the general said he was satisfied that information was adequately contained. After inspecting the metal fragments hidden in an unused hangar, he told the captain in charge, “I want everything in crates by tomorrow. We’ll ship it to Carswell and put Captain Cravitt’s balloon pieces in a separate crate that is clearly marked ‘balloon.’ We’ll put on a dog and pony show for the press at Fort Worth.”

About the bodies he ordered, “Get an army doctor to perform autopsies and find a reliable mortician to preserve them.”

“What about the live one?” Cravitt asked.

“Euthanize it.”

Cravitt did not flinch.

“Anymore loose ends?” Ramey asked.

“Just the sheriff and the disc jockey.”

“Let’s make a call on the sheriff and see where he stands.”

Ramey, Easley, Cravitt and two MPs found Sheriff Wilcox at home in the evening. Ramey came straight to the point. “This is a matter of national security. Neither you nor any of your family is to say anything about this incident. It never happened. Understood?”

Wilcox stiffened. “You do realize you’re talking to a duly elected public official.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Sultan of Swat, the United States Army is willing to take drastic measures to keep this quiet. Do you understand my meaning?”

“You threatening me, General?”

“I am not threatening. I am telling you that if you or any of your family mentions flying saucers, you will have an accident. Our cover story is a failed weather balloon and that is what you are to say if asked. Captain Cravitt, you are to monitor the situation. If you become aware of a security breach, advise Colonel Easley.”

Cravitt and Easley exchanged scowls. Cravitt only said, “Yes, sir.”

After leaving Wilcox shaken and seething, Ramey said, “What about the disc jockey?”

Easley hastened to reply. “He didn’t see anything. Once we convince Brazel that he was mistaken, we’ll take him to KGFL to give a new explanation. We can discredit Joyce if he repeats the original story.”

“Make sure that works.”

Ramey made calls to the FBI, OSS and Army Intelligence to report his findings of the situation on the ground at Roswell, then he boarded his plane and flew back to Carswell Air Base at Fort Worth to prepare for his dog and pony show.

George Wilcox slammed several successive shots of Wild Turkey before he regained sufficient composure to talk to his wife. “I’m the top law enforcement official in the county. Who the hell do I complain to?”

“You might try the FBI.”

After several attempts—and threatening his neighbors if they listened on the party line—he managed to get the director of the FBI station in Albuquerque on the phone. He told his story and finished with: “It’s not that I don’t want to cooperate, but I’m not going to stand for being threatened by nobody.”

The phone was silent for several seconds before the director said, “Sheriff, I’ve been contacted on this matter by Washington, and if you know what’s good for you and your family, you better do just what the general says.” The line went dead.

It took Easley’s provost guards ten whole days to break Mack Brazel. In the end three of them drove him to KGFL where Frank Joyce motioned for him to come into the studio and he noted the three MPs waiting in the reception area.

Joyce said, “So what’s new with the flying saucer story?”

“I got that all wrong. It turns out all it was is a weather balloon. They got some secret deal supposed to spy on the Ruskies and one of ’em crashed.”

Joyce glanced through the studio window to the MPs milling about in the outer office. “Hold on, you do know what you’re saying now is nothing like what you told me on the phone. What about the little green men?”

Brazel also looked at the MPs, then he fixed Joyce with a look of disgust. “They weren’t green, dammit.” He stormed out of the studio.

Sheridan Cravitt got onto the last cargo plane carrying crash debris, bogus weather balloon pieces and the embalmed bodies of the aliens. In his duffle bag, wrapped in a couple of his tee shirts, was what he had taken to calling ‘their library.’ At Carswell Air Base he took it to the office of Army Intelligence. The place crackled with rumors of what the metal shards and strange bodies meant to the future of the world. Cravitt got a meeting with his Carswell counterpart. When shown the artifact he asked, “How’d you keep that from Ramey?”

“There’s another one that the little gray bastard smashed. It’s in with the rest of the evidence, but I snatched this right out of its hand before it got ruined. I want to make sure it gets preserved photographically before the battery runs down.”

“How do you know it runs on batteries?”

“There isn’t any cord. What else could make it work?”

“Who knows—cosmic rays? They got here from another planet, didn’t they? They probably can do just about anything they want.”

“Well, whatever powers it can’t last forever, so I need your boys to take a picture of each page so the crypto boys can work on learning to read it after it quits working.”

“What do you mean page?”

“Look, when you pick it up the squiggles start moving up the front of it, but only for a few seconds, then it stops. The only way I found to make it run is put it down and pick it up again. If we can get a picture of each different page, so to speak, we can have a permanent record to try to decipher.”

“How can you be so sure that’s even writing?”

“What else could it be? Anyhow, it looks just like the squiggles on some of the pieces of their damn saucer.”

“Let me try it.” The intelligence captain took it from Cravitt. “I’ll be damn. I wonder how it knows you picked it up.”

“Probably the heat of your hands or something. It’s not motion. I tried shaking it.”

“Then why does it stop?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe they’re slow readers up there. Maybe it’s half-broken. All the more reason to get it documented.”

“Okay, I’ll get somebody to microfilm it. What do I do with it when we’re done?”

“Find somebody who is smart enough to translate it and see what makes it tick. We might get rich if we invent an electric book.”

Cravitt went to the hangar where Ramey’s dog and pony show was in progress. He stood behind the reporters who were swallowing the public information officer’s explanation of what the phony bits of rubber and balsa wood meant and how foolish the Roswell rubes were to think it was a spaceship. Cravitt shook his head and thought, “What a gullible bunch of assholes.”