Original subtitles

Tonight, on History's Greatest Mysteries.

Late this afternoon, a bulletin from New Mexico suggested that one of the

strange discs had been found and infected.

In 1947, something crashed in the desert in the American Southwest.

Whatever the object was, it has created shockwaves still felt today.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne.

On tonight's mystery...

What crashed in Roswell, New Mexico?

Was it a flying saucer, as headlines first announced, or a secret military

aircraft?

A new investigation seeks answers.

This might be that piece of the puzzle. An ex -CIA officer named Ben Smith has

obtained a cryptic journal. It was found among the papers of Major Jesse Marcel,

the first U .S. Army officer to investigate the wreckage.

He always said that he was sworn to secrecy. Does it contain coded clues of

Marcel really saw? It was not anything from this earth.

What about stories of alleged alien bodies in the wreckage? She said there

little people and there were some dead and some alive.

Did the U .S. government cover up the truth and does it still possess the

wreckage of a UFO?

I do know one name of a man who had pieces of debris.

The truth behind Roswell.

according to those who were there.

Ben Smith has been intrigued by Roswell and UFOs for years.

Investigating was at the core of my work at CIA.

I went under deep cover, lived a double life to collect intel on terrorist

networks, foreign spy activities, even weapons of mass destruction.

Smith says this may be his most challenging mission, trying to figure

truth about what really crashed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

So this is it, huh? This is it. Ground zero.

Don Schmidt has written seven bestsellers about Roswell and

people connected to the incident than anyone alive.

Taking a look at the impact site now, that crash in 47.

I was a special investigator for the late Dr. Jalen Hynek, who was consultant

the Air Force Project Blue Book. I was a skeptic. And the one case that I wanted

to investigate was Roswell.

And for having talked to over 600 witnesses, either directly or indirectly

involved, I am 99 % convinced that what indeed crashed here back in 1947

was a craft of unknown origin, not manufactured on this planet.

Ben Smith asked Schmidt to show him the site where the crashed debris was found.

This is it, Beth.

What we consider the most significant location as far as in the entire history

of the UFO phenomenon.

It's total isolation.

We could just as well be on the dark side of the moon.

You know, my background is in the CIA.

And I have no agenda except to explore this mystery.

Bring some clarity to some unanswered questions.

It's thrilling to finally be out here after having read so much about it, a

of your work.

This is where it all began back in 1947.

In the 1940s, New Mexico was home to some of America's most sensitive

installations, including where the atomic bomb was developed.

By the summer of 1947, the U .S. was worried that the Soviets were building

their own atomic bomb.

And Americans were worried about something else.

Hundreds of reports of UFOs.

What is the flying saucer? What's behind the daily reports of aerial phenomena

in the nation's press?

These supposed societies were reported in a number of newspapers throughout the

United States, and they actually started to grow in number in kind of a mass

hysteria.

Much of the activity seemed to be focused in New Mexico, the hotbed of

activity at that time. New Mexico became the focus, not only of the Soviet

Union, but also the UFO phenomenon, as though someone else was very interested

in our military potential.

By late June 1947, more than a week before the Roswell crash, Residents in

southern part of the state were spooked by nearly 70 sightings of UFOs.

It was just going in a northly motion at a pretty rapid speed, but nothing like

a falling star or a meteorite. So bright like that, you couldn't look directly

at it very long at a time.

Then you had to look to the side of it, just like looking into a bright sun.

Then, on the morning of July 6, 1947, something even stranger occurred.

Roswell Sheriff called the nearby Army airfield to say that a sheep rancher had

come in with pieces of debris that he believed came from a crashed flying

saucer.

The base's commander was Colonel William H. Blanchard, a highly decorated

military pilot.

who in 1945 had supervised the mission of the Enola Gay, the bomber that

destroyed Hiroshima.

By 1947, the base was still home to the 509th, the world's only nuclear

-equipped bomber squadron.

Roswell was the headquarters of the elite military at that time. The base

was always on full alert because they had the atomic bomb.

In response to the call from the sheriff, Colonel Blanchard dispatched

base's intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel.

With him was Sheridan Cabot, an agent for Army counterintelligence.

According to Don Schmidt's research, this is what happened next.

Monday morning, July 7th.

Jesse Marcel and Sheridan Cabot arrive at the debris field.

With the rancher.

Major Jesse Marcel said the first thing that struck him was the massive amount

of debris.

As he would say, there was just so much of it covered an area almost a mile

long.

Interviewed later about what he saw in the debris field, Marcel claimed it was

three quarters of a mile long, a couple of hundred feet wide.

At that point, that material has been out there for days, and no one

else is looking for it, which would clearly suggest it's not ours.

And if it's not ours, then whose is it?

So Harsell and Cabot spend the better part of the day out there looking at

thing and trying to determine what it was.

Marcel picked up different pieces of the debris and put them in boxes in the

trunk of his car.

Cabot would stay behind and concentrate more of the wreckage in a

general area.

Marcel would make the drive back to Roswell.

What Jesse did next, according to his family, was an uncharacteristic breach

military protocol.

He knew the material would be classified top secret the moment it would cross

the front gate at the Roswell Army Airfield. It was important enough,

enough, unusual enough that Major Marcel would stop at his home

on the way back to the base.

He came back real late one night, about 2 o 'clock in the morning, as I recall,

very excited because he found parts of a UFO or a flying saucer at that time,

and he wanted me to see it.

Marcel would describe paper -thin, metal -like material, practically weightless

in your hands, that you couldn't cut, you couldn't burn.

There were silken strands of material that Marcel described, that a lighter

could be held to one end.

And the light would emit out the opposing end. Well, they're describing

optics in 1947.

Yet fiber optics didn't come into development until around 1970.

And then the I -beam structures.

The most unusual part of the debris that I saw was the I -beam fragment.

Jesse Marcel, Jr. spent a lifetime thinking about the strange materials his

father brought home and let him handle.

They were very light, very strong, and they had some writing along the inside

surface of this. And that was the thing that really set this apart from anything

I'd ever seen before.

American official on the scene at Roswell in 1947.

Having learned of Ben Smith's investigation, the Marcel family is

with him. They believe they have something he will certainly want to see.

The Roswell incident could potentially be the greatest event in the history of

humankind.

We have how many 300 trillion stars and 200 billion galaxies?

scattered across like 15 billion light years.

And to think that we're all alone in all of that space is pretty sad.

So I personally want to know, is there anybody out there?

And have they been here?

The Roswell incident has got the potential for physical evidence.

and a host of reliable witnesses who all describe something the

world has never seen before.

There's no way for me to know but to research, to start at the bottom and

my way through the facts.

The Marcel family has a journal belonging to their grandfather.

The journal could change the entire story about what happened at Roswell.

Hi. Hey. Jesse Marcel.

Jesse, pleasure to meet you. Ben. Ben, nice to finally meet you. Come on in.

My brother and sister are here as well.

I first saw the journal going through some military documents of my

and it was just in with the military documents.

Here's a diary.

Oh, okay, wow.

He put it in a cedar chest, and it was in there until the day he died. There's

something very important about that journal.

This is pretty wild.

Right? Until now, no one outside the Marcel family has ever seen this

Does it contain fresh details?

about what really happened in Roswell.

January 4th, 1946 to 1948.

That would have been a year, almost a year after. About a year after. Almost

exactly a year.

Ben Smith's investigation of the Roswell incident has taken him to Spokane,

Washington to meet the grandchildren of Jesse Marcel.

who believe they have a crucial piece of evidence.

Boy, this really does run the gamut then. It starts before Roswell and ends

about a year after. Right.

After his death, Marcel's family found a journal hidden with his military

records that he had never shared with anyone.

There's something very important about that journal.

There are entries dated from around the time of Roswell, but the notations are

strange and confusing.

Could they be coded clues to what Marcel really saw?

Why was he writing movie quotes or songs?

How into pop culture and movie and books was your grandfather?

We never talked about that guy as our grandfather.

No. You know, it could also be something like a mnemonic device where you

memorize something totally different from the subject matter so that it

your recall later.

Ben wonders if their grandfather, a seasoned intelligence officer, was

hide information because he'd been warned.

never to reveal the truth about the UFO.

Since he worked in intelligence, you're not going to say it out, oh, hell, wow,

I just found a UFO.

You're not going to write it out like that.

You're going to be kind of cryptic about it because you don't want anybody else

to maybe see what you're writing.

At one point, the military came back and said, yeah, you've got to stop making

this stuff up about the UFO crash.

And he grabbed his medals and threw them away. He was done.

He was done.

And he was very upset.

Jesse Marcel was born in 1907 in the bayou country of southern Louisiana.

His childhood fascination with maps would lead to a job with Shell Oil,

worked with aerial photographs.

This combination of skills made him an obvious candidate for Air Force

Intelligence School after America went to war in 1942.

Lieutenant Marcel's job Mapping targets for bomber squadrons in the Pacific

earned him two air medals and a bronze star.

When World War II ended, Marcel, with a young family to support, decided to stay

in the military, receiving a plum assignment with the Army Air Force's

elite unit, the 509th Bomber Squadron based in Roswell.

He always said that he was sworn to secrecy, so he never shared everything

had happened out there.

But whatever he saw...

was so significant.

He was willing to take a chance with his entire military career to show his son

and his wife this stuff.

The Marcells say that after stopping at home to show the debris to his wife and

son,

Jesse arrived at the Roswell Army Airfield for the regular morning

meeting.

He presented the strange debris he'd collected to the base's commanding

Colonel William H. Blanchard.

Blanchard ordered his public affairs officer, First Lieutenant Walter Hout,

issue an immediate press release.

I was instructed by Colonel Blanchard to put out a press release, which in

effect stated that we had in our possession a flying saucer.

As soon as that hit the Roswell Daily Record, it was broadcast by the local

radio station.

It went. They didn't use that term back then, but it went viral across the whole

globe.

Late this afternoon, a bulletin from New Mexico suggested that the widely

publicized mystery of the flying saucers may soon be solved.

Army Air Force officers reported that one of the strange disks had been found

and infected sometime last week.

As news that a flying saucer had been discovered spread around the world, the

Army chain of command took control.

millions of Americans believe that what happened next, the effort to conceal the

UFO crash, is one of the greatest cover -ups in U .S. history.

Colonel Blanchard ordered Major Marcel to fly to Carswell Armory Airfield in

Fort Worth, Texas, to present the material to Brigadier General Roger

head of the 8th Air Force, commanding officer over the 509th Bomb Group.

Marcel thought he was flying to Fort Worth with pieces of flying saucer

Major Marcel would arrive at Fort Worth approximately 4 o 'clock that afternoon,

and he presented the material.

Ramey took Marcel to an adjoining map room.

When Marcel would return with the general back to his office, the real

was gone.

In its place was a weather balloon.

The Army called a hasty press conference.

It's at this moment, according to Smith, that the alleged cover -up begins.

Ladies and gentlemen, mystery solved.

It's just a weather balloon device.

Nothing to worry about.

And the press accepted it.

All the personnel at the base were ordered never to bring it up again,

talk about what had transpired, and they got away with it.

31 years later, however, the man at the center of the Roswell incident from the

very beginning came forward with what he said was the real story.

The following morning, we went out to this site where the crash was, and what

saw, I couldn't believe.

Marcel!

says in interviews, that's not the stuff I brought from Roswell.

In a 1980 interview for the series In Search Of with Leonard Nimoy, Marcel

claims he was forced to go along with a cover -up.

They took pictures, of course. They had a whole flock of microphones there. They

wanted some comments from me, but I wasn't that driven to do that.

So all I could do is keep my mouth shut.

And General Ramey is the one who...

discussed, told the newspapers, I mean the newsmen, what it was and to forget

about it. It was nothing more than an observation balloon.

Of course, which we both knew differently.

I had never seen anything like that before.

As of now, I don't know what it was.

It was not anything from this earth that I'm quite sure of.

Watching this interview with his grandchildren, you can really feel the

in the room.

Marcel claimed the military swore him to secrecy and hid the truth.

For his family, it was a government cover -up, plain and simple.

Our grandpa wasn't really a public person. He didn't want the spotlight. In

fact, he kind of shied away from it. But I really think that this gave him a way

to release a lot of weight on his shoulders.

This was like a cleansing in a way, a way just to let off the softest chest,

going to kind of go where it's going to go.

I mean, he's incredibly courageous.

There are very few intelligence officers who ever come forward in public about

what they did.

So there's a very admirable trait of bravery. He stood up for what he

and he went out and he spoke to everyone, and that takes guts, and then

with the blowback.

He felt that there was an importance for it to come out, to be seen, you know,

that something did occur.

Now, I think he was really upset that they made him the fall guy.

and that he couldn't believe that it's still at this point that it was still

being covered up.

And I think he did want it to be out, but at the same point he knew that there

were secrets that had to stay secret.

I think Grandpa wanted us to learn more. I think he really wanted to tell

everything he knew about it.

That's the reason I think there's evidence out there that he did.

We've just got to get to it.

Jesse Marcel's grandchildren hope the journal will vindicate him.

by revealing the truth about what really crashed at Roswell and the cover -up

they say he was forced to participate in.

Somebody comes out and says, you know what, he served his country well and we

apologize for making him go through this.

And also my father, I want some vindication for him too. I probably

answers immediately just looking at it. But over time and as we start to build

the investigation, perhaps some of these clues will come into focus.

This can be a game changer. The rest of the story about what happened at Roswell

from its most important witness.

During his investigation, Smith will work with Joe Pappalardo, a veteran

journalist who specializes in aviation.

My investigation really starts from...

This man here, Jesse Marcel Sr., the chief of intelligence at the 509th

Group at Roswell Army Air Force Base.

Jesse Marcel Sr.

kept a small army portfolio of his military records and in it a small

journal.

Jesse Marcel, the man at the center of the claim that Roswell was a cover -up,

kept this journal among his most important papers.

Obviously, it was very valuable to him. The question is, is it a key to my

investigation?

Some of the dates described in the journal capture 1947.

It's a remarkable piece of history, and nobody really knows about it yet. You're

right to be excited.

If this is real, yes.

This is an actual journal from that time. It would represent a primary

document from that era. So that's the thing that you want to go after as a

researcher. I would like to take a look at what you got to see a little bit more

about this diary.

Let me actually bring it up on the projector here.

This is the notebook here. Right away I see a typical Army field issue notebook.

So here we have a date, 1946.

This entire journal comes from when he was at Roswell. Correct.

Our date here, we have August 31st, 1947.

About six weeks, seven weeks after the U .S. Army Corps put out their infamous

UFO crash at Roswell. Flying disc.

There's a beautiful cursive handwriting.

And then if we fast forward, just kind of erratic, mixed

case, blocky lettering. And I can't make sense of it.

A couple of things leap to mind immediately when you see a change that's

drastic. It's impossible not to notice that it's different. It's either a

different person writing it or it's the same person in a different mindset.

Is that by design or is that just unintentional? The content seems the

How does the journal compare with the timeline of the incident?

Well, there's no mention of Roswell at all. No mention of any events. No

of any wreckage. Just these jokes and quotes and musings and ideas captured in

different handwriting.

And there's only sporadic dates.

They read like quotes from Reader's Digest.

Life is what you make it until someone comes along and changes it.

Two half -brothers make one.

Well, now that I am too old to set a bad example, I delight in giving good

advice.

So it meant something to him, but no one knows what.

Yeah.

He's a soldier. He was in charge of intelligence at the 509th. He knew a lot

secrets. He took them very seriously.

It's kind of hard to imagine the seriousness that people back then...

secrecy and took nuclear secrecy and nuclear weapons in particular.

I mean, there were hordes of Soviet spies trying to get this information at

time.

In 1947, the United States and the Soviet Union were already Cold War

The U .S. possessed nuclear weapons while the Soviets did not.

Major Jesse Marcel and his colleagues in the 509th Bomber Squadron wanted to

keep it that way.

They were basically the only nuclear bombing group in the world. He was

entrusted with the biggest secrets that the military has.

One thing that the Marcel children insist on is that their grandfather was

absolutely certain that the debris that he was holding in this photo right here,

the official government photos and the press release, is not the debris that he

found in the field.

I see my grandfather.

holding up something that he knew that wasn't what he found.

He was adamant that this was not what he saw in the jury field.

I see a man that is not liking what they're having him do, but he knows he

has to do it because that's his job.

That's not what he found.

And at that point in time, I'm sure he kind of felt, well, maybe I'm going to

made out to be a fall guy.

Keeping a secret is one thing, but telling a lie...

is another, and being the face of that lie in the newspaper, could break a man

like Jesse Marcel.

That could explain the difference in the journal as well. Someone under that

much stress, who knows how that manifests.

It's a different handwriting because it's in a different mental state.

What made the writing so cryptic, and why did it suddenly change?

Did it have to do with the UFO or its passengers?

Okay, so you've got this hot piece of evidence in your hands. How do you plan

verifying that it's real?

I think the first step is to authenticate the document itself. Is

the time period or is this a recreation?

If we can exclude the fact that it's a forgery, then we're winning.

Do the forensics first to make sure that it's actually of the era.

Yeah. Another interesting question, why did he have it? Why was it so important

to him that he kept it and left it among his things to pass on to his children?

And then the third tier is trying to figure out what the hell it does.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, we're cut out for you in this one.

To further his investigation of Marcel's journal, Ben Smith contacts Jennifer

Nassau, a leading handwriting expert. She will perform a forensic analysis on

the document to determine if it's genuine or a forgery, and also whether

Marcel wrote it himself.

I understand you worked for the Secret Service.

I did. I completed my training.

with the Secret Service and worked there for a number of years.

I used to work for the CIA, so we have a little bit of, like, USG connection

going on.

My name is Jennifer Nassau.

I'm a forensic document examiner, and what I do is I receive documents that

in question, and I analyze them to determine their authenticity.

At the Secret Service, I authenticated a lot of the threat letters that came in.

We also did a lot of work with documents that were false and forged.

I do have a very interesting document that I need your help authenticating. A

document belonging to the first guy on the scene of the alleged Roswell

in 1947.

Okay. A man named Jesse Marcel, Sr. This could potentially hold Marcel's private

thoughts about the incident that July, about the crash, about the materials,

about the potential cover -up.

So I need to determine that this is not, in fact, a forgery.

If the journal was written by Jesse Marcel in 1947, could it hold the key to

unlocking the mystery of Roswell?

I do have a very interesting document that I need your help authenticating.

Former CIA operative Ben Smith.

has brought Jesse Marcel's mysterious journal to a forensic document examiner

for testing.

This could potentially hold Marcel's private thoughts about the incident that

July. Marcel was the first investigator at the Roswell crack site.

While the U .S. Army claimed the wreckage was from a weather balloon,

family alleges something different, that the journal may hold coded clues about

what really happened.

I would like to believe the journal is going to give us the truths we've been

looking for for the last 70 years.

So I see most of the document is written in a cursive writing.

And then when you get to the end, it changes to a print writing.

Yeah. It may be an indication that there were two different writers in this

journal. That I would have to do a more thorough examination in order to

determine.

It's important to authenticate historical documents because it can turn

tables in terms of what we know versus what we thought we knew. The date of the

document is important to note because what I'm going to do is static dating.

know the introduction dates of certain elements of the paper or the ink. We can

see whether or not they were available during the time that this document was

reportedly produced.

Some of the dates in the journal itself range from 1946 to 1948 and 49.

So they cover the period of the Roswell incident.

But one of my biggest concerns about this document is forgery. I want to make

sure that this document is real. What can you tell me about what you've seen

forged documents?

Have you seen forgeries of this length before?

I have not, but there is a famous case where there were several diaries

purportedly written by Hitler.

On April 25, 1983, the West German magazine Stern announced that it was in

possession of never -before -seen diaries written by Adolf Hitler that

rewrite the history of World War II.

Stern had paid close to $4 million for the diaries.

and sold the rights to other major publications around the world.

Totaling 60 volumes, the writings were authenticated by several prominent

historians.

But just days before publication, the diaries were exposed as fakes.

A forensics analysis by the West German archives quickly discovered that the

diaries were made from a kind of paper and ink that wasn't even invented until

after World War II.

Their author was a prolific East German forger named Konrad Kujau, who wrote out

his own confession in the style of Hitler's penmanship.

The way that they ended up determining that they were fraudulent is because the

paper contains optical brighteners that were not available until after Hitler's

death. Interesting. You know, there's always conspiracy in every corner that I

look. How long do you think it will take?

Usually it takes a few weeks. Oh, it does.

Okay. Especially something of this magnitude.

While Jennifer Nassau performs a forensic analysis of the journal, Smith

team of archaeologists and geophysicists to meet him at the debris field.

He hopes state -of -the -art technology will find signs that something more

powerful than a balloon crashed here.

Even 70 years later, if we can find evidence that what crashed here was not

balloon, it could prove that Jesse Marcel was telling the truth, that

crashed here was not of this world.

According to author Kevin Randall, the weather balloon explanation put forward

by the military at that 1947 press conference blindsided not only Jesse

but also Mack Brazel, the rancher who found the ranch.

General Ramey, of course, trotted it out. It's a weather balloon.

The problem with that is Mack Brazel knew what weather balloons looked like.

This is Bill Brazel's memory of how his dad reacted.

He said that's what the Air Force tried to make him believe, that it was a

weather balloon.

He said, Bill, he said it was not a weather balloon. He said, I don't know

it was.

But he said it was something.

All together different.

And much bigger.

In this 1991 interview, Judd Roberts, manager of Roswell's local radio station

KGFL, says that local residents were very familiar with the military's

balloons. What was the general reaction to the weather balloon story?

Well, the weather balloons were being launched about a block from us every

night.

So weather balloons, per se, were not that interesting to us.

If local residents were indeed familiar with weather balloons, is it likely

Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer, could have mistaken a balloon for a

flying saucer? It was definitely not a weather balloon.

And it was an aircraft.

So what it could have been, I wouldn't know.

She mentioned Roswell. In most places these days, people bring up UFOs. It's a

question, a story, a myth that is known practically worldwide.

Yeah. Smith has asked Bill Dolman to join the team of experts at the debris

field. Dolman is the former principal investigator for the University of New

Mexico's Office of Contract Archaeology.

Of all the disputed locations, this is the one that is least disputed.

You're the only one who's actually done a dig out there. And you've done two of

them. Two.

Dolman made two previous expeditions to the debris field in 2002 and 2006.

But he's hopeful that using new technology might uncover fresh evidence.

Bringing archaeological skills to a potential debris site, I'm hoping that

can turn up some fresh new.

So what hit the debris field?

There are a lot of conflicting counts.

A craft and just debris.

Some people saw a meteor -like object.

What do you recommend we do first? Start with the archaeology dig or deploy the

drone technology?

We definitely deploy the drone technology because the archaeology comes

they identify anomalies.

that we can then go investigate using our standard archaeological methods.

There isn't a U .S. government map with this mark, but I actually happen to have

a journal that belongs to Jesse Marcel Sr.

And Jesse was an intelligence officer. He was a smart guy.

It's possible that he could have hidden some of what he knew in this journal.

I would like to determine, one way or the other, if there was any evidence of

cover -up.

If... There was a debris site or an impact site, and it was removed and then

leveled over. We might be able to see something like that.

I am finally back at the Roswell debris field.

It's kind of hard to believe that a place this abandoned and quiet could be

the birthplace of ufology in the United States or in the world, actually.

The term ufology refers to the study of UFOs, and for some, Roswell is the most

important UFO, because it is the site where an alien spaceship allegedly

to Earth.

With Roswell, you have the best elements of all UFO cases.

Crash sites, physical bodies recovered, and then all the eyewitness testimony on

top of that.

It's just this big mystery. Did it happen? What was it?

That's still not solved.

It's hard to write it off. And so you're left with this big question about

something of incredible potential significance.

This is the famous Backhoe Trench 103.

So this would be what ufologists consider the actual furrow in the ground

where some kind of craft made contact with the Earth.

You were here in 2002.

conducting an archaeological dig here, right in this furrow. Yeah, and the

furrow runs that way, supposedly.

There are nails, big nails and rebar spikes in the ground, marking the grid

system that we used for locational control in 2002.

Archaeologists are the crime scene investigators of the past.

We treat archaeological sites just the way a CSI treats a crime scene, to use

our methods to look for the evidence of it.

122 .8.

Those methods are about to get a serious upgrade.

Joining the team are two Canadian geophysicists, Colin Myasga and Eric

who will deploy 21st century technology to investigate abnormalities in the

terrain.

So density altitude 6 ,770 feet.

This may be the best equipped team ever to answer the question that has stumped

generations of investigators.

What kind of airborne vehicle crashed outside of Roswell?

I'd like to find additional proof of that impact zone. What crashed here and

heavy was it at what velocity?

At the Roswell crash site, Ben Smith and a team of experts are using state -of

-the -art equipment to find possible evidence that Jesse Marcel...

may have been telling the truth that what crash landed here was no weather

balloon. It makes the most sense to start here and then widen the search

there.

One curious aspect is that weeks before that early July day, when Marcel found

what he believed was the wreckage of a flying saucer, there were a huge number

of headline -making UFO sightings in the area.

At the local radio station, Judd Roberts remembers fielding dozens of callers

reporting UFOs. And people that I knew who were highly respectable who saw some

of these things, and they had no reason to kid anybody about

standing on the side of their pickup and watching these lights go back and forth

up in the middle.

Dad looked up in the west and saw an object that came down and had lights

blinking.

It was rather frightening to him.

In 1947, Paul Wilmont's elderly parents were sitting on their porch when they

were sure they saw a flying saucer.

He said all of a sudden it seemed to rock a little bit and sort of

counterbalanced itself, wiggle a little bit, and then seemed to settle down and

take off at a rapid rate of speed.

Then came Roswell, the event that would become the holy grail of ufology.

a discovery that would be proof for many that aliens had visited the Earth.

In truth, there is no agreement on what day the crash occurred.

UFO investigator Don Schmidt believes it was July 2nd.

On the late evening of July 2nd, 1947, there was a severe lightning storm in

central high desert of Lincoln County.

All ranchers go out on the porch to see where it's raining.

My husband, he had to stand out there and see where it was raining.

There was so much thunder and lightning that I

begged him to come in the house and finally there was this terrible thunder

clap. And he came in and he says, boy, that hit something.

People think about desert as just pure dry, and most of the time it is. But

that moisture starts creeping in, All it needs is something to lift it, and

that's going to give you incredible thunderstorms.

Witnesses described not only the storm, but between the thunderclaps, they heard

what sounded like an explosion, and then seeing something in the northern

portion of the sky.

A large, red, pulsating light came directly at us, and all I could think

was that it was a plane that was in trouble.

While there is no definitive proof about what crashed in the field 75 miles west

of Roswell, no one disputes that it was rancher Mack Brazel who made the first

discovery while taking his sheep to pasture.

Ranching in New Mexico would be very focused on the monsoon season. And so a

rancher, they'd be watching for those storms and watching where the rain

come down because their cattle or whatever they're raising needs water.

There was a young boy who was with Matt Brazel, the son of Floyd and Loretta

Proctor. His name was Timothy D.

Proctor, D as he was called.

Mack happened to stumble upon this huge debris field, strange, unusual

wreckage.

Mack had found a huge field filled with metallic debris, and he was annoyed

because, A, he didn't know who was going to clean it up, and, B, he had to drive

the sheep around it to get them to water.

They would not cross it. They were either spooked or they sensed something

coming from the wreckage.

Mack then takes the proctor back to his parents, and he presents some of the

material to the proctors.

He showed us this piece that looked like plastic or wood of some kind, and he

said that there was some metallic -looking stuff that when you crushed it,

just straightened right back out. It wouldn't, you know, wouldn't stay

According to Roswell author and researcher Don Smith, Loretta Proctor

first person to see samples of the debris that Mack Brazel brought back

field.

Well, we told him it was probably a UFO and he should report it.

Mack Brazel was convinced by his neighbor that he should take it into

Mack would take samples of the debris to Wade's Bar in Corona.

and present pieces there to fellow ranchers, his friends, his neighbors.

The small farming community of Corona was only 15 miles from the debris field.

It would be Mack Brazel's first stop before going on to Roswell.

Mack Brazel came to Corona and talked to my dad about the debris that he had

found out on the Foster Ranch.

The material was as thin as a wrapper on a...

Lucky strike package, but you couldn't break it.

And if you twisted it and scrunched it up together, it would come back to its

own. He had no idea what it was.

And they said, I bet you have one of them UFOs we've been reading about.

Mack Brazel was convinced by his neighbor that he should take it into

and show it to the sheriff.

But Brazel is still responsible for the ranch.

And it isn't until the end of the week, Sunday, his day off, that he finally

makes the trek, the 75 -mile drive into Roswell to present it to the sheriff,

George Wilcox.

Lieutenant George Wilcox had been the county sheriff for 20 years.

Most of his work involved locking up drunks and settling disputes between

ranchers over livestock and grazing rights.

Mack Brazel brought in two boxes of wreckage. Sheriff George Wilcox

handled and observed the material firsthand.

The sheriff immediately suggested that Mack Brazel would report this to the

Roswell Army Airfield, the 509th Bomb Group. It sounds like a matter they need

to know about most urgently.

It was that call to the 509th.

that led its commander to dispatch Jesse Marcel, his intelligence officer, to

investigate the strange report.

I had never seen anything like that before, and as of now, I don't know what

was. When Marcel returned to the air base and showed colleagues pieces of the

debris he'd collected, Base Commander William Blanchard made the decision to

public and issue that famous press release.

Late this afternoon, a bulletin from New Mexico suggested that the widely

publicized mystery of the flying saucers may soon be solved.

With the story of the flying disc making international news, Mack Brazel didn't

see any harm in being interviewed by the local radio station.

That morning, reporters from KGFL in Roswell brought Mack Brazel over to the

radio station to finally, you know, tell the world the truth about what had

happened. And the military was waiting for him.

They nabbed Razzle, and they would then hide him out at the base for the next

five full days.

He would later complain he felt like he was in jail, that they had asked him the

same questions over and over and over again, 24 hours around the clock, over a

weather balloon.

According to alleged eyewitness accounts, in the days that followed, The

military swept through Roswell and Corona, threatening scores of

who'd heard Brazel's story.

These local residents were warned to keep quiet or they could be charged with

treason, which carried the death penalty.

The whole neighborhood was scandalized that the Army, that the services would

treat people like that.

The military reportedly used Brazel to walk back the previous day's front page

story. that a flying saucer had crashed.

Days later, Brazel was escorted by the military, taken to the newspapers, taken

to the two radio stations, but specifically KGFL, where Frank Joyce,

reporter, meets Mack Brazel. And to his dismay, Brazel only describes a weather

balloon.

Joyce sees the two MPs and is like, oh, now I see what's happening.

Agents or agencies or people unknown wanted him to change off of the original

story.

And in his total frustration, Joyce takes him off the air.

I said, the little green men, and that's where he said, yeah, only they weren't

green.

At the Roswell crash site.

Smith is with a team of experts, searching for evidence of the wreckage

here in 1947.

The best plan for us would be to start getting our multispect data going at the

area. We can cover a broad area, get the highest resolution, most up -to -date

aerial imagery.

We also have the multispectral camera. Oh, cool.

So you can do both at once. Yeah. In one flight, we're getting multispectral

imagery and regular RGB.

Until now, no one has ever used this technology here.

Whatever we find, we'll know more about this place than anyone ever has.

We want to look for unnatural features. We want to look for straight lines and

that impact and then that skid mark kind of thing.

So the commonly thought spot is just down in this area.

Archaeologist Bill Dolman gives the geophysicists some never -before -seen

images of the area.

By comparing an aerial photograph of the terrain taken just months before the

Roswell incident to one taken seven years later, the team can identify

changes.

Look at that. Wow, that is... Here's the original location of interest, and then

there's that big linear feature that we're interested in.

Just 800 meters from where Jesse Marcel examined the debris, The 1954 photo

shows what could be several long furrows carved into the earth.

There are delineations in the soil from a northwestern to a southeastern

direction that match witness descriptions of something falling from

hitting the earth, skipping and scattering debris.

That's what we see in the aerial footage.

I want to throw everything we've got now at that new site. I mean, what can we

bring? to exploit the linear features here. Well, we'll send the drone over

there for sure.

If the team can show something with more force and velocity than a weather

balloon hit here, it would be a major discovery.

Anytime there's differences in soil, different vegetation can arise.

And if there's something that doesn't look natural in the vegetation that we

pick up in the multispectral, we'll see that very well.

So the drone is going back and forth, taking thousands of photos. Oh, cool.

Across parallel lines across the whole site. Yeah.

So here we have the aerial photography collected by the drone. Yeah. Along the

entire site.

Yeah. Then we can turn on the multispectral imaging.

So we have the red are little to no vegetation.

Uh -huh. Blue is going to be...

kind of dense vegetation and kind of everything in between.

But after hours of searching, the team gets disappointing news.

At the moment, we're not picking up any distinct feature near the furrow.

So the multispectral imaging didn't really show any anomalies other than

trenches that we've already dug. Yeah, nothing that can't be unexplained at the

moment. Yeah. The team concludes the archival image had a defect.

What else can we throw at that puzzle to figure out what happened?

Really, what we have right now is surface information.

So we need to get boots on the ground, get subsurface information.

Next, Colin Myasga will use a magnetometer, a tool that can detect

the Earth's magnetic field.

So something really hot hit the Earth and heated up the surrounding soil.

It basically hits the reset button on the Earth's magnetic field.

of that soil and it'll take on the earth's magnetic field at the time as it

cools back down.

So this thing's going to pick up anything with iron, magnetite.

And then what else do you have left in your toolbox?

We've got the ground penetrating radar and the gamma ray spectrometer to

for radioactive material.

So anything that's been in really high altitude or space is going to be exposed

to a lot more radiation.

That radiation is going to stay with that material, and then it's going to

a strong signature when it hits the ground. It's going to stay there

Colin hopes to pick up a strong magnetic signal in the vicinity where rancher

Mack Brazel first came across the debris.

It's enough metal.

to basically max out the sensor.

We did find an interesting anomaly.

As we were walking around, I was doing the magnetometer survey.

So now this is the magnetometer. You see all these high spots?

Those are all the metal pins in the ground. They're really, really high

responses. The most interesting thing was something up here.

Definitely an interesting magnetic anomaly that I want to investigate.

So could this be one of those instances where the heat of an impact could...

Change the magnetism of the soil around it or beneath it? Potentially, yeah,

absolutely.

Many hours into their search, Colin finds something exciting.

A patch of ground with unusually high magnetic readings.

It's an anomaly that could provide groundbreaking new evidence of what

here. So given its possible depth, is that...

ages out of our 70 -year time span?

I won't be able to say until we start digging, and I'm going to leave that to

the archaeologists to start dating as they dig down.

So this was one of the high points, hovering between 10, 15 nanoteslas per

meter.

Colin marks the perimeter of the anomaly so that archaeologist Esperanza Juarez

can collect soil samples to analyze for radiation traces.

Run your line along the major axis, definitely hitting right over top of

spot. So the flag here outlines the general shape of the anomaly?

Exactly. And, I don't know, conveniently enough, it's the same orientation as

Bill's original furrow. If we keep the UFO crash site in mind, it's like

something hit here.

Maybe there was slightly more minerals that could become magnetized in this

area, and then as it kind of skidded, it still was hot enough to cause that

magnetization, but maybe there's just slightly less particles in that spot, so

there's a slightly weaker signature.

After stringing a grid across the site of the anomaly, Esperanza begins her

work, collecting a range of samples and documenting the location of each.

The strongest signature was over in this square right here? Yes. Okay.

And then plus I've also taken a soil sample.

The team wants to rule out routine earthly causes for the anomaly.

No clear signs of a campfire or like a prehistoric site or anything like that?

No. Yeah. So we've eliminated a volcanic anomaly.

That's right. There's just no volcanic.

We've eliminated a campfire anomaly. Yes, there's no fire heart.

So we're still looking at that. The most likely candidate for this anomaly right

now is the remnant magnetization due to heat. The soil will be able to tell you

the time frame.

So the idea is that we test the soil, and if the magnetism of that soil

1947, then we know that something potentially in impact froze its

1947.

The soil and rock samples will be sent to a lab where they will be analyzed to

see if they contain metals not from this area and possibly not from this world.

While he waits for the soil analysis to be completed, Ben goes to visit the

grandson of Mack Brazel, the rancher who took his sheep into the field looking

for water but found crash debris.

It was Mack who alerted the military, and according to local legend, was then

detained and threatened to keep quiet.

Joe Brazel lives a few miles outside of Roswell and has avoided journalists and

researchers for years.

With no proof about what crashed, spaceship, weather balloon, or something

Ben believes Joe might have a piece of the puzzle that could help unravel the

mystery of Roswell.

taking the time to meet with me.

Joe rarely talks about how the Roswell incident impacted his family, but he's

agreed to meet me.

The Roswell incident recently has popped up in my research as one of the more

credible phenomenon to investigate.

And in particular, the first people to encounter the debris on the field, your

grandfather, Mac, being the...

You know, patient zero, the first person to encounter this debris, makes people

close to him especially important to the investigation.

And I would love to hear about some of the details you inherited from your

father and from your grandfather, Mac.

Well, everything I heard was from my dad.

Okay. You know, he told me what he knew and what he experienced with it.

And then, you know, what had Mack, you know, the few things that he said after

he came back from Roswell.

I think if you really want to hear what my dad had to say, you know, we have a

clip that you can watch, you know, and then we can talk a little bit more about

it after that. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to hear.

Joe Brazel's dad, Bill, was Mack's son.

He was interviewed in 1989 by Japanese television.

I was not out at the ranch at the time, and I picked up an Albuquerque paper,

and here's my dad's picture looking at me, and I thought, well, I wonder what

he's done now.

My dad was living in Albuquerque, and once he found out about it, well, he

to the ranch because he knew that his dad was gone, and he went down there to

actually take care of the stock, and the Army had it blocked off.

They had a detachment out there picking up the pieces and everything, and

wouldn't let him in.

The Air Force had asked him to stay in Roswell.

And I went out to the ranch and stayed until he got back.

And I asked him what he'd got into, and,

oh, he says, I found a bunch of trash.

And I kept asking him questions, and he said, well, he said, I told the Air

Force I wouldn't tell anybody.

He said, you're probably better off without knowing.

After the Army did their thing and, you know, Dad was down there helping Mac on

the ranch, you know, rainstorms or whatever they'd be riding, they'd see a

little piece and he'd pick it up.

So, and of course, riding horseback, you see lots of things, you know.

And I picked up a few scraps.

His description of some of this stuff is like tinfoil, but it was, you know,

just a lot tougher.

This is the way my dad put it to me.

It's material that he never saw before or ever saw again.

Bill Brazel's decision to collect his own souvenirs eventually brought the

military to his door, just as it had with his father.

The debris was confiscated, and military police told him to keep quiet about

what he knew and had seen, or he would face arrest.

The debris that he had collected was confiscated by the...

by the military police or somebody from the base. He just said two guys in a

car. Two guys in a car.

That's all he ever told me. He didn't say whether they were government. He

said that there was two guys that showed up in a car and they said they weren't

going to take it, but they weren't leaving without it. Did they ever

themselves? No.

You know, and the other thing you've got to understand is that Mac gave his word

he wouldn't talk about it.

And his dad, if he gave his word, that kind of extended to him as well. Right.

I don't mean to misinterpret your father's claims, but I did want to ask,

there anything ever in your life that would make you question what your dad

No. Nothing about his character, nothing about his mental stability or his

emotions? No.

Okay. I like to explain my dad this way and myself.

What you see is what you get.

He's not going to tell you something to your face that isn't true or, you know,

tell you something and then go tell somebody else something else. Right.

Yeah. There's a rumored intelligence, as we say in the business, that Mac or

your Bill, your dad, hid some of the material on their property.

And some might even claim here on this property.

One of the most persistent rumors about Joe's father is that despite

surrendering the cigar box, he managed to hide a few shards of the wreckage

somewhere on this property.

To just get a little more specific, I think there was a claim at one point

there was perhaps some debris buried under a cement slab on the old Brazel

property. Yeah.

And I wanted to know, is there any truth to that story?

Why don't I just show you where that slab is?

Lead the way.

If Joe still has a piece of what he believes his dad took from the debris

it could be a bombshell development.

They hid it underneath this house, right here.

Investigator Ben Smith is meeting with Joe Brazel, the reclusive grandson of

Mack Brazel, the rancher who first stumbled upon the mysterious crash

Roswell, but never spoke publicly about how the Army threatened him into

silence. He said he gave his word that he wouldn't talk about it, and he said

very little about it after that.

Jesse Marcel also never disclosed everything he'd seen or the full story

cover -up. They hid it underneath this house.

Meanwhile, back in New York, handwriting expert Jennifer Nasso is doing a test

to try and authenticate the journal that belonged to Marcel and could contain

the secrets of Roswell.

This is the journal I was given as a question document to compare the

handwriting of Jesse Marcel.

But it's not just handwriting. I'm looking at a lot of elements to help try

solve this puzzle.

The first thing I do is I look at the paper.

I use specialized equipment in order to analyze what might be in the paper, and

that might help to date the document.

I then look under my microscope.

and determine what type of writing instrument was used to create this

In order to conduct a handwriting analysis, I do a side -by -side

between the question and the known, in this particular case, Jesse Marcel, and

determine whether or not there are similarities or differences.

For example, the formation of the lowercase p had a very tall introduction

stroke, which dropped down below the baseline and then wrapped around to form

the bowl of the p.

And that P is found throughout the entirety of the question document.

Jennifer Nasso is trying to determine whether the journal is genuine or fake.

The first step before decoding its meaning to learn if it might change what

know about Roswell.

Back in New Mexico.

So tell me a little bit more about this house here.

This house was built in 1902, so it's kind of in rough shape.

Smith has reached what he hopes will be the most interesting part of his visit.

I asked Joe about the rumor that there might still be some debris hidden on his

property. The story goes that Bill Brazel, Joe's dad, might have kept some

the debris as souvenirs.

Some researchers have claimed that your father or Mac might have buried

something or hidden it under a cement slab.

Yeah. Well, I can show you right here. This is where the rumor was that this

house, they hid it underneath this house.

And as you can see right here, there is no foundation.

There is no cement slab under this house.

Yeah, looks like dirt under there. It is. In fact, when this house was first

built, of course they put the hardwood floors in, but this is built on the

dirt. The only slab that was ever put in this house as far as this.

rock slab right here for the old fireplace.

Yeah. That's it.

And there's nothing under there. That's on dirt. It's been there since 1902,

long before the UFO.

Yeah. I could put the rumor to rest that there's nothing underneath the cement

slab here because there is no cement slab.

There's no truth to that rumor whatsoever.

When they took that cigar box he had, they took everything he had.

I guarantee you if there had been something buried underneath this house,

would have dug it up a long time ago.

How do you think the rumor about debris hidden under this cement slab that is

not here sort of impacted the way your dad approached this story?

What it did was it put a fear into him that, you know, something might happen

one of his family members.

Yeah. Because they, you know, they focus on the monetary and think he has a

piece of it and it's worth so much money.

Right. So he got real reluctant about talking about it, and therefore you

really get at the truth because you're always trying to fight and debunk the

rumors. You've confirmed a lot of things for me that I think is pretty

fascinating. One, the integrity and the quality of the person that your father

and your grandfather, the people that they were.

And two, that you've confirmed some things in the timeline for me that make

think that it's reasonable for me.

to continue the search, continue to use resources.

Well, something's happened, because they've spent a lot of money trying to

figure out what happened, and they've spent a lot of money hiding what really

did happen.

Is there any other information that I could use to help me in my investigation

to get to that ground -level truth?

There's some other people you can talk to, but I don't feel comfortable telling

you on camera.

Okay. Would you mind...

type in their names into my phone, so at least I can... I'll give you one name.

Joe Brazel doesn't have any crash debris, but he does have something else.

The name of someone Ben Smith has never heard of. Someone Smith hopes can bring

this investigation closer to the truth.

Following up on a promising lead from Joe Brazel, Ben Smith is on his way to a

senior center in the farming community closest to where the debris was found.

He hopes the local residents who gather for lunch every day will have memories

they'd be willing to share.

Well, I've got all the village elders.

around the table here today. I wanted to learn a little bit more about your

perspective on what happened, you know, in that early July 1947.

My father -in -law, he was on top of a windmill tower working.

And this was about the same time that this supposed incident happened.

He said there was something that came at him out of the sky.

There was really no noise.

And he was afraid it was fixing to cut his head off, so he went running down

windmill.

And he said it was just a flash. It was there, and he just liked to never get

out of the way quick enough. And then whenever he looked up, it was going

That's a story that I have not heard in connection to these events before. It

hasn't been out a whole lot, but he's far behind. And when this man said

something, he was truthful.

I have a lot of questions. There's some characters here that are involved in

this incident in 1947. Do you remember Mac Brazel? I'm not sure.

That's the one that told him about the UFO phone?

I remember Mac. Oh, you do? Yeah. Can you tell me what you remember about Mac?

He was a cowboy.

Mac had a reputation for being honest.

He had a reputation for working hard.

He just was a hardworking cowboy.

Cheryl Perkins' parents.

owned the drugstore from which Mack Brazel called the sheriff to report

some strange crash debris in his grazing fields.

Mack Brazel goes to the Dubois Pharmacy, and he makes the phone call with your

mother, Geraldine.

Mack calls the sheriff, and from there, that's really the first time that

information gets transmitted to the public.

I'm curious whether you overheard any of these details and what you recall from

that whole sequence of events.

But I remember conversations about it, but probably was not there when that

was made.

Okay. The main thing that I remember my parents talking about was they certainly

believed that something happened.

Do you recall your mother ever talking to Mack Brazel about what he saw out in

the field? I think that that did not happen. Oh, really? It would have been

natural for him to have followed up with, yeah, I had to go to Roswell and

for three nights.

Or, yeah, I did this. Or, yeah, I did that.

He didn't say anything.

It just didn't stand to reason that they wouldn't have talked about it. Right.

So something happened after they took him to Roswell.

My daddy was a World War II veteran.

And when the government says you don't talk about something, you didn't talk

about anything.

And that was my theory as to why they did.

It was never talked about. The ethos, the attitude at the time, like you said,

was, look, this is your duty not to say anything and to follow orders, and so

keep your mouth quiet about anything that might have happened here.

And the general attitude was it was not a weather balloon.

If there was anything, it wasn't that. It was not a weather balloon. No, it was

not. And what about the Proctor family?

Well, Dee Proctor was in my class.

Started first grade together and graduated from high school together.

Dee Proctor was the young boy who was with Mack Brazel when he found the

wreckage. Brazel would allegedly take Dee home and show his mother some of

they found.

There was some metallic -looking stuff that when you crushed it, it just

straightened right back out. It wouldn't, you know, wouldn't stay

Well, we told him it was probably a UFO and he should report it.

Dee was seven when all of this happened.

And Dee's sister told me for positive sure that he was with

Mack Brazel. Looking back on it and knowing for sure that Dee was with Mack,

never ever talked about it.

So that makes me think for sure something happened.

I do believe that people purposely kept quiet about what happened because I

think they were probably threatened by the government.

Or their sense of patriotic duty was appealed to and they said, don't say

anything about this because if it's true and they were truly aliens, then we

think everybody is going to panic.

Has anybody that you know personally ever claimed to have found a piece of

debris? I do know one name of a man who supposedly had several pieces

of debris. Uh -huh.

And I haven't heard his name mentioned at all today, so I'm not mentioning it

either.

Why the hesitancy to share with me his name?

It's privacy.

Yeah. I don't know I can ask if they would be willing to talk, but I can bet

that they would not.

Yeah. Well, put in a good word for me. I will. Just, you know, if you could. I

will. We're still pretty private about protecting the people who have been most

affected.

As I was leaving, one of the seniors slipped me the name of someone related

another eyewitness.

The Roswell incident is like an intricate puzzle, and I finally feel

pieces are starting to fall into place.

Investigator Ben Smith heads to the office of handwriting expert Jennifer

who has spent nearly a month.

doing a forensic examination of the journal to find out if it is genuine or

fake.

With him is Jesse Marcel's grandson, who believes the journal may contain the

intelligence officer's coded secrets about what really happened at Roswell.

It's fascinating and potentially helpful to solving, you know, for me, the

larger story about the Roswell incident.

I just can't imagine he wouldn't leave some kind of evidence.

some writings of some kind about what was a very, very important event.

Right. This might be that piece of the puzzle.

Jennifer? Hi.

Hey. Nice to see you again. Good to see you. This is Jesse. Hi, Jesse. Jennifer

Natham. I see you. Jennifer Natham, too.

Follow me. I'll show you what I've been doing. Great.

So I looked at the writing.

ink lines of every passage in the journal.

And I'll show you under magnification.

You can see a little bit better image of the ink line.

This is consistent with non -ballpoint pen ink. Oh, okay. And the way I can

is you can see the ink line, how the ink kind of bleeds into the paper fibers.

Sure. Whereas in ballpoint pen, the pen ink is more viscous. And so it kind of

sits a little bit more on top of the paper.

Here is an example of ballpoint pen ink.

And the characteristics commonly seen with ballpoint pen ink is you don't see

that ink bleed into the paper and kind of sits more on top and has a sheen to

it. And on curvatures, you see what we call burst striations that move from

inside to outside on a curve.

So what I'm seeing throughout the document is that the entirety of the

is created with that non -ballpoint.

pen ink that is consistent with the time period which this document is totally

created yes the next thing i looked at was the paper itself and what i'm

for are optical brighteners optical brighteners are added in the paper

manufacturing process and it makes the paper look nice and bright

So the way to look for optical brighteners is to look under UV

what should happen if it contains optical brighteners is that the paper

luminize. It should glow under UV. Here I'll put the journal in so

you can see. And just to give you a comparison, I'll put a document which I

contains optical brighteners under, right on top. Wow.

So that technology began in around 1950.

Correct. Well, that makes sense because I think the last date that I saw in the

journal was like 1948. So professional opinion and the evidence showing that it

was created before 1950 anyway.

Yes. It is consistent with documents that were produced during that time

Great. Okay. So did you find anything like a watermark that might...

also provide clues about the time period?

Right. So there is no logos or insignia on either cover or in the pages which

would indicate the company that manufactured this document.

However, when I looked with transmitted light shining through the document,

there is a watermark present on the document.

In looking at... Oh, yeah, I see it. You can see the watermark. And on the top,

looking through...

several pages and being able to piece it together. The top actually says

Juniata, J -U -N -I -A -T -A.

So curiosity got the better of me. And a quick Internet search revealed that

Juniata is a university in Pennsylvania.

Interesting. That was the area where my grandfather went to intelligence school.

In Pennsylvania.

He went to intelligence school in Pennsylvania.

He was actually a member in the very first class of the very first

school. Oh, really?

finished that class, he turned around and they had him teach that class. Oh, I

did read that.

And again, it was right in the same area where this paper came from. And that

was in what year?

1940? It had to have been 41, 42, something like that. Yeah, it was after

war had already started. Exactly, yeah. He joined really right after Pearl

Harbor. To sum up, this document does appear to be consistent.

with the time period with which it's reported to be written. It's half the

battle right there.

So I did a handwriting comparison with the journal and the known specimens I

for Jesse Marcel.

Now, I will say that in flipping through the journals, the handwriting did

appear to be freely and naturally executed.

It does not appear to be deliberate or hesitant in its execution.

There is one feature.

that I'll point out, and that is the capital letter M, where it is written

almost like three sevens attached.

So this is in the printed section.

This M does appear in the cursive section from time to time.

Oh, it's just like it.

It is stunning news.

Both the cursive script and the print were written by the same person.

The journal is genuine.

Next on Roswell, the first witness.

The Roswell incident is real.

The investigation moves into uncharted territory.

It negates the skeptical arguments about the Roswell case.

With new leads that have never been explored before.

Actually raises more questions than answers, though. Was the mysterious

Jesse Marcel kept secret, written in code?

To hide its meaning from the government?

To a cryptographer, this indicates a certain kind of cipher.

Or was it something more sinister that forced Jesse Marcel into silence? He

said, there are things that this world is not ready for.

The impact site. The remains of the craft and the bodies recovered.

What else was Jesse Marcel hiding from the world?

The investigation uncovers shocking possibilities.

You think the debris could still be at the house? I know it could be.

Could it change what we know about Roswell?

I'm Lawrence Fishburne.

Thanks for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.