Congress's auditors searched government records at Rep. Steven Schiff's request. They found two 1947 records (a unit history and an FBI teletype), both describing a balloon, and discovered that Roswell AAF outgoing messages from October 1946 to December 1949 had been destroyed without documented authority.
OFFICIALUS Air Force (Col. Richard Weaver, 1st Lt. James McAndrew) · 1995
The Air Force's own investigation, first issued in July 1994 and published in full in 1995: the debris most likely came from a Project Mogul balloon train, a classified programme to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Includes the 1947 documents it found and interviews with Mogul staff.
OFFICIALUS Air Force (Capt. James McAndrew) · 1997
The second Air Force report, on the ‘bodies’: it argues the accounts match anthropomorphic crash-test dummies dropped from high-altitude balloons in the 1950s and other later events remembered as 1947.
The Pentagon's review of decades of US government UAP records: no verifiable evidence that the government or private firms recovered or reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology; most sightings were misidentifications. Its Roswell section (pp. 21–22) restates the Air Force findings: debris consistent with a Project Mogul balloon, no record of recovered aliens or extraterrestrial material.
Archived copy (Wayback Machine, 9 January 2025): https://web.archive.org/web/20250109134632/https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF (original returns HTTP 403 to automated checks).
OFFICIALFBI Dallas field office; released on the FBI Vault · 1947-07-08
One-page urgent teletype to the FBI Director and Cincinnati: the Eighth Air Force reports a ‘flying disc’ recovered near Roswell that resembles a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, says a call with Wright Field had not borne that belief out, and that the material is being flown there.
“THE DISC IS HEXAGONAL IN SHAPE AND WAS SUSPENDED FROM A BALLON BY CABLE, WHICH BALLON WAS APPROXIMATELY TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER.” source
Scanned page with redactions (one word before ‘borne out’ is blacked out). Spelling ‘BALLON’ as in the original.
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Press
Newspaper and magazine coverage, then and now. Linked, never copied.
The front page that started it: the paper reports the Army air field's announcement of a recovered ‘flying disc’. Scan on Wikimedia Commons (1947 US newspaper; Commons lists it as public domain).
PRESSWilliam J. Broad, The New York Times · 1994-09-18
Front-page report (Section 1, page 1) on the Air Force report issued on 8 September 1994: the debris came from Project Mogul, a once-secret balloon programme, pieced together from the report and interviews with former Mogul staff.
“The program was called Project Mogul, and its goal, set by a postwar America wary of losing its atomic monopoly, was to search high in the atmosphere for weak reverberations from nuclear-test blasts half a world away.” source
Archived copy (Wayback Machine, 27 November 2025). Original: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/18/us/wreckage-in-the-desert-was-odd-but-not-alien.html, which refuses automated checks. The Air Force's 1995 report cites this article.
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Video
Official footage and video discussions. YouTube loads only when you press play.
OFFICIALNational Archives at College Park, Motion Pictures (Records of Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Air Staff; 341-ROSWELL-2) · 1947
Colour 16 mm film filed with the moving images behind ‘The Roswell Reports’: a balloon is inflated and rises with equipment attached, tracked from a plane. Viewable in the National Archives catalogue. Nothing in the record ties it to the flight blamed for the Roswell debris.
“A plane provides aerial tracking views of the balloon as it wafted over terrain.” source
National Archives Identifier 2789203; running time about 11 minutes 45 seconds. The year is the catalogue's production date.
Why Files episode on the "Alien Interview" claim (Lawrence Spencer, 2007). Speculative and about the claim, not about the historical file itself.
Commentary, not a primary source. Video page opened 2026-10-31 (title, channel, date checked) by Argus.
YouTube · The Why Files · loads only when you press play (youtube-nocookie)
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Analysis
Our own reading of the file, written from the sources on the other sheets. Opinion is marked as such.
Roswell is the best-documented ‘nothing’ in the archive. The two 1947 records that survive, found by Congress's own auditors, both describe a balloon with a radar reflector; the Air Force later identified it as a Project Mogul array, a secret attempt to listen for Soviet nuclear tests from the upper atmosphere. That explanation fits the debris descriptions from 1947 and the secrecy of the time.
The case stays alive for two reasons. First, the stories of bodies and a crashed craft all come from recollections given thirty or more years later, which is exactly the kind of evidence that grows in the telling. Second, the GAO found that Roswell AAF's outgoing messages for 1946–49 had been destroyed and nobody recorded who authorised it. A gap is not a cover-up, but it is a gap, and we say so.
Our label is Explained: an official investigation identified a cause, and an independent records search found nothing that contradicts it. The Air Force investigating the Air Force is a fair objection, which is why the GAO report matters more than either Air Force volume.
What it shows
That something real was recovered in July 1947 and that the military changed its public story within a day; the Air Force itself does not dispute this.
That the only two surviving 1947 records, found by the GAO, describe a balloon with a radar reflector.
That records which could have settled the matter were destroyed, and nobody recorded who authorised it.
What it doesn't prove
That a spacecraft or bodies were recovered: every claim of that kind comes from recollections given decades later, not from a 1947 document.
That the Mogul explanation is wrong: the destroyed records are a gap, not evidence of what was in them.
That the 1994 and 1997 reports are the final word; they are the Air Force investigating the Air Force, which is why the independent GAO search matters.
The other side
The strongest case against “Explained” is the gap in the record. The GAO found that Roswell AAF’s outgoing messages from October 1946 to December 1949 had been destroyed without documented authority, so the paperwork that could have settled the matter no longer exists. A balloon train accounts for the two surviving 1947 records; it cannot account for records that are gone, and critics argue the Air Force investigating the Air Force is not an independent check.
The exact date of the rancher's find: accounts range from mid-June to early July 1947.
What Wright Field's examination found. The FBI teletype says the material was being flown there; the GAO's search turned up no record of the result.
TO VERIFY Candidates, not yet checked
Testimony: a primary, linkable transcript or recording of Maj. Jesse Marcel's own 1978–79 interviews, and the later witness affidavits collected by researchers. The Air Force's 1995 report describes the 1978 events; the interviews themselves are not cited here.
The original Roswell AAF press release text of 8 July 1947.
Found, but not linked to a source we trust. Not on the sheets until they are.
