Roswell & UFO Nation

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County," the press release read.

"The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher's home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters."

The Roswell Daily Record headlined the story "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region," providing a historical artifact.

The Army was quick to retract that and say it was actually just a weather balloon. Then, in the '70s, a retired Army officer who retrieved pieces from the crash came out to say he believed it was extraterrestrial. The conspiracies continued and in 1994, the Air Force published a report calling the object that crashed a nuclear test surveillance balloon, and any "alien bodies" were just test dummies dropped from a high altitude. Rather than stopping all the talk about it being a UFO, that only added fuel to the fire.Now, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a very interesting document has come to light. It is currently in the FBI's Vault, which contains thousands of records released via FOIA that have been scanned and uploaded. The Roswell document is a 1950 internal memo to J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, from the head of the Washington, D.C. field office. The subject of the memo is "Flying Saucers" and it describes how an Air Force investigator reported that three flying saucers were recovered in New Mexico.