Exposing the 1947 Roswell UFO Cover-up
The following is an excerpt from The Children of Roswell: A Seven-Decade Legacy of Fear, Intimidation, and Cover-Ups by Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt
Nightmare in the Emergency Room
From all eyewitness accounts, something suspicious was happening inside the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) hospital at the time of all the rumors about the crash of a flying saucer just north of town. Outside doctors and nurses rushed throughout the halls and into and out of rooms that had been designated off-limits to the regular staff. The normally assigned staff were relieved of their duties and sent back to their quarters until further notified. The wings of the complex, despite all of the commotion, were eerily quiet except for guarded whispers. Nothing was to be openly discussed without permission, as though those allowed to stay remained on auto-pilot to complete their clandestine work. MPs were positioned around the outside perimeter as well posted inside the main emergency corridor. Ambulance trucks would hurriedly pull up to the rear loading dock, which led directly to the emergency room. As First Lieutenant Rosemary A. McManus, a regular nurse assigned to the RAAF medical unit, described to us just weeks before passing away in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in 1994, “Something big had happened.” She declined to acknowledge anything more.
Lieutenant Colonel Harold M. Warne was a highly experienced hospital administrator who, as a doctor, had been exposed to the worst human atrocities during WWII. Even in 1947, planes would occasionally crash during training exercises, and bodies mangled and burned beyond repair had become all too common at the world’s first atomic base. But nothing in Warne’s medical schooling prepared him for this. Something big had happened, and it was not part of any medical journal. And what became especially insulting was that even though Warne was in charge of the RAAF medical unit, he was not cleared for this situation—a situation he personally knew not to be based on mere rumor. Therein may be the cause of his behavior as opportunities would later present themselves.
All military hospital administrators had their own executive secretary. Dr. Warne’s was a 27-year-old civilian woman named Miriam “Andrea” Bush. Bush was a graduate of New Mexico State College at Los Cruces, where she majored in business administration. During WII college campuses were principal recruiting centers for the FBI, and young women like Bush saw the allure of such a lifestyle. That lifestyle required one to be unmarried, in no relationship, and free to be assigned most anywhere in the country. According to Bush’s family, she specialized in intelligence, which would explain why she was hired by the military for a Top Security job at the RAAF after the surrender of Japan.
Now, one item of crucial importance needs to be emphasized here: The RAAF hospital in 1947 did not have a morgue. That is precisely why the base had a contract with a private mortuary: the Ballard Funeral Home. The city of Roswell did not have its own coroner at that time, so it relied on Chavez County to provide such assistance. All reports of extra security and the presence of outside medical personnel took place at the exact time of the purported crash of the flying saucer outside of town. If civilian fatalities were involved, they would have been sent directly to one of Roswell’s two funeral homes. The other was LaGrone, and both it and Ballard are still in business today.If there were military fatalities, they would have gone first to the base hospital and then to the private mortuary. Curious phone inquiries were made to the Ballard Funeral Home regarding the availability of children’s caskets. This was a rather bizarre request on the face of it, but even more so coming from a facility without a morgue—and, more importantly, no children were ever reported to have died from any cause on the base during the entire month of July 1947. Why the need for child-size caskets? Dry ice was called in from Clardy’s Dairy in Roswell during this same period of time. Subsequently, there were follow-up calls to the mortician asking questions about recommended embalming techniques that would be the least detrimental to biological tissue and bodily fluids. Something big had happened, and it appeared that the RAAF hospital had in its possession a number of bodies beyond the realm of standard and regulated state law. In any event, the absence of a morgue notwithstanding, the base hospital would have to temporarily serve for whatever “bodies” superseded legal protocol.
It was dinnertime one evening during one of the days highlighted by all of those strange circumstances when Miriam Bush arrived at her parent’s home from a rather unsettling day at the base hospital. She sat down to eat in the dining room with her mother and father, who was the first chiropractor to set up a practice in Roswell; her brother, George; and her sister, Jenny. Many years later, both George and Jenny recounted how upset their sister became as she pushed her food aside. She became panic-stricken as she started to weep uncontrollably and raced toward her bedroom. The entire family had great respect for her employment at the base. Did she lose her job? A close friend? George sensed something worse—more sinister. “Fear seemed to overcome her,” he said. Dr. Bush reacted immediately and he went to her aide.
He found his daughter lying on her bed as she continued sobbing. Finally, her father was able to calm her enough to learn what was distressing her so terribly. The story she would confide was told between tears and near-shock. It all would sound like a bad dream, but her emotional behavior was all too real. It was something she was never prepared for. None of them were. This nightmare was for real. Slowly, she was able to verbalize exactly what the cause of it was.
She had been performing all of her regular duties at the hospital earlier that day, but grew more and more curious about all of the additional personnel who seemed to be relieving the regular staff. So when her boss, Dr. Warne, took her by the arm and led her aside, she expected either an explanation or that she, too, would be dismissed for the day. Instead, whether out of frustration from being left out of all the commotion or merely just the human desire to share all of the excitement with one of the few local staff on hand, Warne cautiously walked her to the examination room. Upon entering, surroundings that otherwise would have been quite familiar to Bush demonstrated something she did not anticipate. She was immediately taken aback to observe a number of bodies on gurneys in the middle of the room. But something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. At first she quietly cried out, “My God! They’re children!” But she soon realized that their body size was the only child-like quality. Their skin was grayish to brown in tone, and white linens covered most of each figure. But the heads—the heads were too large. And those eyes, those large eyes that wouldn’t shut. “Those staring eyes,” she cried. Panic started to quicken her heart rate, and then it happened: “One of them moved!” All her father could do was hold her and listen in total disbelief as she wept. He was aware of all the talk in town about the crashed spaceship outside of town and the crew of little men. But now it had touched his own family, and there was little if anything he could do to remedy the pain in his daughter’s mind. Eventually she would cry herself to sleep, though one might argue whether sleep would serve as any respite. Mental exhaustion was more likely reason.
Mornings can be a blessing or a resumption of the same pain experienced the night before. Miriam’s professional training tried to engage and, with little thought, her fear grew more and more into anger at her boss. “Why did he have to show me something so upsetting?” became her primary motivator for returning to confront Dr. Warne. But just as important, the entire town of Roswell was abuzz with all the talk about the crashed flying saucer and the small men who piloted it. Only the base south of town could provide the answers, and only the hospital knew the whole truth. The morning newspaper carried headlines about all the excitement being over some old weather balloon. How silly, she thought.
Much had taken place overnight while Miriam played the same scenario in her mind over and over again. Maybe she imagined that the next time all that disturbed her would somehow magically change. Base personnel, who had forgone sleep, dealt with the reality that commanded their full attention: A temporary morgue was hastily set up, a full-scale recovery operation was taking place at another site further to the northwest of town, and another body site was located. Most all of the clandestine activity at the hospital was on hold at least for the time being—as though nothing big had ever happened. The day was Wednesday, July 9th, and Miriam’s fate for the rest of her life was about to be sealed.
As did so many others who were merely performing their duties at the RAAF, Miriam immediately became suspect. Any base personnel and employees who saw anything out of the ordinary had to be warned of the consequences of speaking out of turn, and the traumatized secretary was no exception. Her brother, George, somberly described to us her demeanor that evening, as she said, “I am never to say another word about what I saw. None of you ever heard me say anything about it,” she chided them. According to her brother and her sister, Jenny, she displayed all the symptoms of being subjected to heavy-handed threats. She would become more and more paranoid about the entire ordeal. Yet she couldn’t share even her worst fears with the very family who also knew the truth. There was nothing any of them could do and certainly nothing any of them could prove. The entire situation became rather hopeless. Best to do just as the military sternly advised—never to say another word, as though it never happened. In many ways Miriam could then try to convince herself that it was nothing more than a nightmare. Unfortunately for her, the images of what she witnessed in that examination room were etched in her very psyche, and those who observed her realized she wouldn’t let it go. She would need to be watched.
No one ever questioned Miriam’s truthfulness, and she refused to ever discuss the incident again. Her fear and paranoia were two-sided: both the haunting images of what she experienced and the concern for government reprisal. But it had also made a lasting impression on her brother. When George married Patricia, it was one of the very first private pieces of family history he confided to her. Sadly, no one in Miriam’s immediate family was able to penetrate the wall of silence built around her. Whatever she saw in that hospital examination room in 1947 tormented her relentlessly. She would marry within a year—someone she had just met—move to California, and try to forget the unforgettable.
After nearly 40 years of a loveless, childless, “arranged” marriage, she would finally file for divorce in 1987. A tremendous weight was lifted off her shoulders; she was not distraught or depressed about the failed relationship. Ironic that she was casting aside part of her past—which all began in a Roswell hospital room back in 1947. Such was the distinct impression from her sister-in-law, Pat, who spoke to her over the phone on a regular basis. Within months of the marriage breakup, Pat sensed a subtle change becoming the focus of each new conversation: Miriam was becoming increasingly paranoid, according to Pat. She was deeply concerned about being watched and followed, which, to Miriam’s sister, Jenny, all seemed to be connected in some way to 1947 and the objective of a 40-year marriage to a gay man. It appeared that shadowy figures had taken his place, albeit from a distance.
During December 1989, Patricia Bush would receive another phone call from Miriam, but it would be the last time anyone would hear from her. She had become obsessed with the fear that someone was spying on her day-to-day activities. Nothing Pat could tell her would alleviate her dread. Still, no one in the family suspected that time was about to run out for Miriam.
The very next day, Miriam registered into a motel just north of San Jose, California, in the small town of Fremont. If she had no intention of drawing any attention to the family, she mistakenly checked in using her sister Jenny’s name. She was unaccompanied, and no one saw her again until the next morning. The coroner’s report concluded that she had taken her own life by wrapping a plastic bag around her head, a rather prolonged and gruesome way to commit suicide. In fact, statistically it is seldom done in that manner. What was not publicized was that there were fresh scratches and bruises all over her arms. Other suspicious details, such as no prearrangements with her insurance providers or a suicide note, were not considered by investigators. Jenny believed that her sister was sending a message by the use of her name. “Something was not right, and it was her way of letting us know,” she remarked. Miriam’s own suspicions and fears may not have been totally unfounded. The truth she possessed about Roswell died with her—death being the ultimate silencer.
Within a few years of Miriam’s death, investigator Victor Golubic tracked down Dr. Jack Comstock, who had served as the RAAF chief surgeon in 1947. Not only didn’t Dr. Comstock have any memory of the unearthly patients, but he also had no memory of former hospital associate Miriam Bush—denial being the second greatest silencer.
© Thomas Carey and Donald Schmitt. Excerpt is printed with permission of the publisher New Page Books. ISBN: 978-1632650191 List Price: US $16.99.
Flying Saucer Recovered at Aztec, N.M.
by Scott Ramsey, Suzanne Ramsey, and Frank Thayer
Patrolling the pre-dawn darkness, a policeman on a lonely road in northwestern New Mexico looked through his windshield, shocked at seeing a massive glowing disc only 100 feet above his vehicle. The disc appeared to be in trouble, wobbling as it flew soundlessly above him.
A few minutes later, a goat rancher doing early chores saw the same disc passing low over his property. He said he saw it taking a course straight north. Suddenly the disc collided with the bluff of a mesa, and the rancher saw a shower of sparks. He was astounded because there was no crash. The disc kept flying! It went over the top of the mesa, still unsteady and wobbling.
The rancher decided he had to report this sighting, but he had no telephone. Telephones were rare in post-WWII New Mexico, and so he quickly went to a store in the little town of Blanco, close to his ranch, where a telephone was available to area residents 24 hours a day. As a patriot and WWII veteran, he knew he had to report this event to the Air Force. It was so important that he made a long distance call to Albuquerque and Kirtland Air Force Base.
The disc was still barely airborne, in distress but traveling True North. In the darkness, the massive disc made a controlled landing on a mesa near Aztec, N.M., setting down, slightly tilted, edge down in the silt on the rocky flat surface. The glow faded when the saucer came to rest. Even though the landing site was almost 12 miles from the town of Aztec, the spectacle had caught the attention of rural residents, and because there were oil drip tanks at the base of the mesa, smoke from an unrelated fire of burning scrub trees and brush was alarming to the oil company.
A young oilfield worker and his foreman were dispatched to the mesa in order to protect the oil tanks, and they found a frightening sight. The tanks at the bottom of the mesa were not in danger, but smoke was rising at the mesa top in the grey of dawn. The men were faced with an unworldly vision as they walked up onto the tabletop of the hill. The worker has since passed away, but he was extensively interviewed in 1995. He was up close and personal with a flying saucer, actually having the courage to walk on the surface of the gleaming disc to get close to a dome at its center. Doug Noland said, “The windows or portholes looked like mirrors…one of the portholes was busted.” Looking through that hole “the size of a quarter,” he recalled that he saw two bodies slumped over what appeared to be a control panel.
It was through this small hole that a long pole or rod was inserted and ultimately pushed large button inside the saucer that opened it up.
The event made such an impression that Noland remembered the size of the disc, and its flat, tapered surface, very thin at the edge and thicker toward the center where a slight dome bulged at the top and at the bottom of the disc, the bottom dome causing it to lie askew on the mesa.
The workers found themselves among 16 people who were now gathered at Hart Canyon mesa as dawn broke. Everyone was amazed and perplexed. Was this some secret weapon of the United States or was it from somewhere else? The policeman who followed the disc earlier was among the crowd milling around. The courageous or foolhardy oil workers walked on it or stood close to it, despite the warnings from older, more cautious observers. Others milling around the scene included area ranchers, a county commissioner, a Baptist preacher, and two policemen.
A few hours later the military arrived to take charge of the scene. They separated and debriefed the spectators, none of whom had left the scene, swearing each one to secrecy for the sake of national security.
The incident itself is amazing, but research has uncovered the rest of the incredible true story. The military dismantled the undamaged disc and secretly transported it southeast to Los Alamos National Laboratories, one of the most secure locations on the continent. The call went out to nine of America’s top scientists, and they gathered hurriedly to study the craft, its structure, its propulsion, and the 16 small, dead crew members found inside the disc.
By 1949, these scientists thought it imperative that the public learn about this recovered saucer and what it meant to the history of mankind. They approached Frank Scully, a prominent author and columnist of the day, and told him the whole story.
Scully wrote a best-selling book describing the Aztec saucer, hiding only the names of the scientists. Of them he wrote “Men who talked freely in the summer of 1949 wouldn’t tell their story for $20,000,000 by the summer of 1950.” The iron curtain of secrecy was descending.
For many years, the story of the Aztec saucer landing and recovery languished until researchers such as William Steinman and Scott Ramsey went back to Aztec and reconstructed the full details of the incident.
It was Scott Ramsey who met and interviewed two of the workers who had been on the mesa with the saucer in 1948. He secured the first-person witness accounts of what happened that day. Ramsey spent almost three decades following every lead and talking to every person who might have corroborating evidence for any part of the story, from those who were present at the crash site, through the military recovery and cover up that followed. Thirty years of research has now led to the inescapable conclusion that the Aztec saucer was an historic reality, and in 2000, a plaque was erected on Hart Canyon mesa to commemorate the recovery of an extraterrestrial craft in March 1948.
Over the years, some have attempted, without researching the event, to declaim it as a hoax, one even engineering charges against two men who refused to identify the secret scientists who first leaked the story to an author in 1950. Those writers who have tried to dismiss the Aztec Incident have done no research and have never visited the mesa where the disc actually landed.
The honor roll of actual researchers include Frank Scully (1950), William Steinman (1986), and now the Ramseys and Frank Thayer. They have all welded a chain of evidence proving beyond argument that an undamaged 100-foot flying saucer settled on to Hart Canyon Mesa on March 25, 1948. The whereabouts of this disc and the bodies of its unfortunate crew is unknown, the information being still Above Top Secret and not accessible to the American public. American readers deserve to know the truth.
Scott Ramsey, Suzanne Ramsey, and Frank Thayer are the authors of “The Aztec UFO Incident,” published by New Page and scheduled for release December 15, 2015, ISBN # 978-1632650016. List price is $17.95
The connection between UFOs and nuclear missiles
By Robert Salas
Even before the testing of the first atomic bomb, doubts about its use arose among a group of scientists working hard to make the bomb a reality. Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard and Edward Teller were among them. Clearly, these top scientists understood that if their project was successful, as they were sure it would be, there would be an arms race and a new world would be created that would be on the brink of disaster for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, this vision has come to pass. Since the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, we have seen a continuum of situations or incidents that have placed us on that brink of a worldwide nuclear disaster. We have had a very costly nuclear arms race, seen nuclear weapons lost at sea, misplaced, and involved in accidents. We have seen nuclear material stolen and offered for sale to anyone for any purpose. We have many times seriously considered using them during ensuing wars and conflicts. During the Cuban missile crisis, we came very close to all-out war between nuclear powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which very likely would have resulted in nuclear war.
In 1967, the total number of nuclear weapons stockpile worldwide was about 32,000 (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 2004). That was the greatest number of nuclear bombs ever assembled and ready. It was also the year that two major, but un-publicized, highly classified incidents occurred involving nuclear weapons and unidentified objects.
The 1967 Malmstrom Air Force Base (Montana) Missile Incidents
This is the story of U.S. nuclear missiles disabled by unknown forces. The truth of this story is supported by documents and the testimonies of many people. I am one witness to these events.
The basic facts of this story are these: On March 24, 1967 I was on missile alert duty as a launch officer at Oscar Flight, a Launch Control Center (LCC) for Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile system. Our main base was Malmstrom AFB, Montana. Oscar flight was located about one-hundred miles east of Great Falls. The LCC was an underground, hardened capsule. I was one member of a two-man crew controlling the launch capability of our missiles. On this evening, immediately after receiving a desperate call from my topside security forces guarding the facility about an inexplicable object hovering above the site, all ten of my missiles under my control, were disabled. This type of failure in this state-of-the-art system was a highly improbable event for many reasons. The missiles operated independently from each other. However, the failure mode readout from our information system was identical, ‘Guidance and Control System’ failure. In addition, we were informed that the same kind of event occurred previously. On March 16, 1967, Echo Flight LCC also reported the disabling of their ten missiles while unidentified objects hovered over the missiles. Their failure mode was also the same. There is no question as to the fact that these incidents occurred. These are documented in official documents, written statements and audio recordings of testimonies of witnesses. The incidents were security classified until 1994. It is important to note that the missiles were only temporarily disabled. There was no permanent damage to the missiles or missile systems. They were all back up on alert status within twenty-four hours.
In debriefings on these incidents and referenced documents, it was made clear that these were not some sort of military readiness exercise and that the military command structure did not understand the cause(s) of these missile shutdowns.
The investigative team that evaluated these incidents concluded that a definitive cause of these incidents could not be determined. My subsequent research revealed that the U.S. Air Force tried (and succeeded) to suppress the evidence of these incidents from the federally funded University of Colorado Investigation on Unidentified Flying Objects. That investigation terminated in 1969 without considering the Malmstrom incidents described. That study concluded that UFOs were not a threat to our national security and there was no reason for the U.S. Air Force to continue investigation of these objects.
In fact, there have been many other similar incidents where unusual flying objects were observed near and impacted nuclear weapons facilities, before and after 1967. Some of these are referenced below. I have only listed those that are supported by multiple witnesses and/or documentation. The U.S. Air Force and other government agencies have hidden behind the shield of ignoring and discrediting UFO reports since 1969. The reality is that they have not been able to fully explain this phenomenon and its potential impact on national security.
Even if we assume that there was a ‘rational’ explanation for these incidents, it was another ‘wake-up’ call about the worldwide madness of nuclear weapons. Because the nature of these incidents was such that they clearly resulted in the disabling of our most sophisticated nuclear weapons systems, a definitive cause was never determined, and an extraordinary coordinated effort was made to suppress this information, it is likely there was an impact on our internal policies regarding nuclear weapons.
We have had an on-going love-hate relationship with nukes since their inception. There is ample historical evidence that nearly all of our U.S. Presidents have at least given some consideration to the use of nuclear weapons. General Douglas McArthur proposed using them against China during the Korean War; JFK considered using them during the Cuban missile crisis, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon considered the nuclear option against North Vietnam.
There has also been a continuous stream of nuclear accidents. As early as 1944, radioactive material has been released into our environment causing untold harm. There have been radioactive leaks from nuclear submarines. Aircraft have crashed with nuclear weapons onboard. Nuclear weapons have been improperly transported. Nuclear material has been improperly shielded during transport resulting in radiation exposure. There have been over 100 major nuclear reactor accidents. Humanity has been able to survive these, without the use of nuclear weapons. Clearly, however the survival human civilization is not assured. It would only take one nuclear world war to assure our destruction. Today, the world faces a common enemy, not from space but from within. It is the enemy of nuclear weapons. The most serious of human endeavors we face today is to control those aspects of our current state of technology that could cause us to self-exterminate.
We have made the effort to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and the nations who possess them. But still there remains an over-abundance of them at the ready for use at a moment’s notice. In a recent report on the status of U.S. nukes states, “As of early 2013, the United States has continued to reduce its nuclear stockpile, and retirement alone has accounted for a dip of over 250 warheads since last year. Of the total stockpile of approximately 4,650 warheads, an estimated 2,150 warheads are deployed. The arsenal is composed of roughly 1,950 strategic warheads deployed with approximately 800 missiles and bombers, as well as nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads deployed in Europe.” (Kristensen and Norris, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, March 2013) In addition, there remain at least nine independent nations that possess nuclear weapons.
Today, the world is facing another nuclear crises over the question of what to do about Iran and their nuclear weapons capability. However, North Korea has also become a nuclear threat. North Korea has performed nuclear weapons testing and has a missile delivery system. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and it could be argued they are a politically unstable country. In truth, the technology is available to any independent country set on producing nuclear weaponry. The real issue is not Iran, North Korea or other countries, but how our civilization will deal with the hard fact that we all have the means to produce these horrific weapons but we don’t yet know if we have the means or the will to control their production and use.
In 1914 H. G. Wells published The World Set Free, which spoke to a future world, beset by nuclear weapons, one that would be forced to fight a nuclear war in order to experience its horrific results and thus endeavor to finally be rid of them. Madam Curie had recently published her work on radioactive elements, Einstein had published his theory relating mass and energy and World War I was imminent. As with many of his other novels, Wells combined concepts of the current scientific and social realities and the possibility of states possessing weapons of unimaginable power. He presented a world where nuclear states were likely to use these weapons. It was an amazing insight into our current state of affairs.
Currently we are involved in negotiations to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons capability. Our negotiations with Iran must succeed – the alternative options could lead to the use of nuclear weapons! Even the current rhetoric: “All options are on the table,” is inflammatory toward war. Our failure in this negotiation could logically lead to the following scenario:
- Israel bombs perceived nuclear assets resulting in a declaration of war by Iran.
- Other Islamic nations declare war on Israel
- The U.S. aligns itself with Israel, thus also declaring war on their enemies.
- Iran and other Islamic countries continue and achieve development of nukes – possibly with the help of Pakistan.
- A radical Islamic group obtains a dirty nuclear weapon and detonates it in some major city – possibly Tel-Aviv.
- Military actions are taken against the presumed sponsor-State of those attacks.
- There is an escalation of hostilities – leading to the use of nuclear weapons.
This is a chilling scenario that does not seem to be an unreasonable result of failure to negotiate a reduction of nuclear arms and nuclear states.
Nuclear war has been a constant threat since the inception of the atomic bomb. Even if this scenario does not come to pass, the threat of nuclear war will hang over our heads until humanity finally takes the steps necessary to eliminate these weapons from the stockpiles of all nations.
Personally, I am convinced that the UFO incident that I experienced at Malmstrom AFB in 1967 and other similar incidents were simply intended to be a profound message to all of humanity to abolish our nuclear weapons. If, these messengers were indeed visitors from advanced extra-terrestrial civilizations, they may have had to deal with the threat of nuclear war among themselves and found a way to control them without resorting to nuclear war. In any event, to paraphrase J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Director of the first nuclear bomb project, “…it is not for us to believe this can’t be done.”
©2014 Robert Salas, author of Unidentified published by New Page Books a division of Career Press, Pompton Plains, NJ. EAN: 978-1601633422 List Price: US $15.99