This article appeared in the Advertiser, Lafayette, Louisiana, on
10-29-92:

FLYING SAUCER STORY FUELS DEBATE

IRVING, Texas (AP) -- Both sides in a UFO debate remain light years
apart nearly half a century after the Army claimed briefly it had
recovered a flying disc in New Mexico.

About 200 experts and enthusiasts at a weekend conference agreed the the
1947 announcement about an unidentified flying object in Roswell was a
big mistake. They disagreed heatedly over how the mistake was made.

"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday
when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group... was fortunate
enough to gain possession of the disc," the Army release said.

Skeptics say there is no hard evidence the wreckage was anything other
than the remains of a military balloon. That was the Army's final
explanation.

"It was a big embarassment," UFO debunker PHilip J. Klass said at the
national meeting of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal.

CSICOP, based in Buffalo, N.Y., encourages the critical investigation of
paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible scientific point
of view, the group says.

The release was issued on the authority of an intelligence officer who
was unable to identify the wreckage, said Klass, former senior editor of
Aviation Week and Space Technology.

But some researchers believe the government goofed in 1947 by calling
attention to the find -- and has had to cover it up ever since.

"It was no... weather balloon," was the deathbed declaration of an
eyewitness, according to Donald R. Schmitt, co-author of "UFO Crash at
Roswell" and director of special investigations at the J. Allen Hyneck
Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.

No only does Schmitt believe the wreckage was a UFO, he is investigating
reports that the military recovered the bodies of aliens from the craft.
He is trying to find a nurse believed to have helped with an "autopsy."

The nurse had told a friend the bodies were smaller and more delicate
than an adult human, with large heads and large concave eyes, Schmitt
said in his book. Their hands had four fingers and no thumb, she
reportedly said.

"We are convinced she is still alive," Schmitt said Saturday.

[end of article]

Billy,
telnet://ricksbbs.synchro.net:23
http://ricksbbs.synchro.net:8080
IRC www://irccloud.com/irc/ricksbbs/channel/ricksbbs
---
þ Synchronet þ Rick's BBS - telnet://ricksbbs.synchro.net:23