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 inspected.

Fishburne: In 1947,

something crashed in the desert

in the american southwest.

Whatever the object was,

it has created shockwaves still felt today.

I'm laurence 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.

Fishburne: An ex-cia officer named ben smith

has obtained a cryptic journal.

Fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: Does it contain coded clues

of what marcel really saw?

- It was not anything from this earth.

Fishburne: What about stories of alleged alien bodies

in the wreckage?

- She said there were little people,

and there was some dead and some alive.

Fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: The truth behind roswell

according to those who were there.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[foreboding music]

♪ ♪

a former cia operative, investigator, and author,

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.

Fishburne: Smith says this may be

his most challenging mission:

Trying to figure out the truth about what really crashed

near roswell, new mexico, in 1947.

♪ ♪

- so this is it, huh? - This is it.

Ground zero.

Fishburne: Don schmitt has written seven best-sellers

about roswell and interviewed more people connected

to the incident than anyone alive.

- Taking a look at the impact site now of that crash in '47.

I was a special investigator

for the late dr. J. Allen hynek,

who was consultant to 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Ben smith asked schmitt to show him

the site where the crash debris was found.

- This is it, ben,

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 lot of your work.

- This is where it all began, back in 1947.

♪ ♪

fishburne: In the 1940s, new mexico was home to some

of america's most sensitive military 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 sightings 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 military activity at that time.

New mexico became the focus.

Not only the soviet union,

but also the ufo phenomenon, as though someone else

was very interested in our military potential.

[booming]

♪ ♪

fishburne: By late June 1947,

more than a week before the roswell crash,

residents in the southern part of the state were spooked

by nearly 70 sightings of ufos.

- But it was just going in a northerly motion

in 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,

and you had to look to the side of it,

just like looking into a bright sun.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Then, on the morning of July 6, 1947,

something even stranger occurred.

♪ ♪

roswell sheriff called the nearby army air field

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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: In response to the call from the sheriff,

colonel blanchard

dispatched the base's intelligence officer,

major jesse marcel.

With him was sheridan cavitt,

an agent for army counterintelligence.

♪ ♪

according to don schmitt's research,

this is what happened next.

♪ ♪

- Monday morning, July 7th,

jesse marcel and sheridan cavitt

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 3/4 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 marcel and cavitt spend the better part of the day

out there looking at this thing

and trying to determine what it was.

Fishburne: Marcel picked up different pieces of the debris

and put them in boxes in the trunk of his car.

♪ ♪

- cavitt would stay behind and concentrate more

on the wreckage in a general area.

Marcel would make the drive back to roswell.

♪ ♪

fishburne: What jesse did next, according to his family,

was an uncharacteristic breach of military protocol.

- He knew the material would be classified top secret

the moment it would cross the front gate

at the roswell army air field.

It was important enough, strange 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 2:00 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 was 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 fiber optics in 1947,

yet fiber optics didn't come into development

until around 1970,

and then the I-beam structures.

♪ ♪

- most unusual part of the debris

that I saw was the I-beam fragments.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Jesse marcel, jr.

Spent a lifetime thinking about the strange materials

his father brought home and let him handle.

- They were, uh, very light, very strong,

and they had some writing on the inside surface of this,

and that was the thing that really set this apart

from anything I had ever seen before.

♪ ♪

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

- I am on my way to meet with the marcel family,

the grandchildren of the first american official

on the scene at roswell in 1947.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Having learned of ben smith's investigation,

the marcel family is eager to talk 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.

You know, we have, uh, how many--300 trillion stars

and 200 billion galaxies and, uh--

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, uh, you know, 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 work my way through the facts.

♪ ♪

the marcel family has a journal belonging to their grandfather.

♪ ♪

this journal could change the entire story

about what happened in roswell.

♪ ♪

[doorbell rings]

- hi. - Hey.

- Jesse marcel. - Jesse, pleasure to meet you.

Ben.

- Ben. - Yeah.

- 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 grandfather,

and it was just in with the military documents.

Hers the diary.

- Oh, okay. Wow.

- He put it in a cedar chest,

and it was in there till the day he died.

There's something very important about that journal.

♪ ♪

- this is pretty wild. - Right?

Fishburne: Until now,

no one outside the marcel family

has ever seen this journal.

Does it contain fresh details

about what really happened in roswell?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- January 4th, 1946 to 1948.

See, that would have been a year--almost a year after.

- About a year after August-- almost exactly a year.

Fishburne: 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.

- Right. - It starts before roswell

and ends about a year afterwards.

- Right. - Yep.

Fishburne: 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 with 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 prompts your recall later.

Fishburne: Ben wonders if their grandfather,

a seasoned intelligence officer,

was trying to hide information because he'd been warned

never to reveal the truth about the ufo.

[dramatic music]

- since he worked in intelligence,

you're not gonna state out, "oh, wow, I just found a ufo."

you know, you're not gonna write it out like that.

- Right.

- You're gonna be kind of cryptic about it,

because you don't want anybody else

to maybe see what you're writing.

- Mm-hmm.

- At one point the military came back and said,

"yeah, you've got to stop

making this stuff up about the--the ufo crash,"

and he grabbed his medals and threw them away.

Says he was done.

He was done, and he--he was very upset.

[dramatic music]

fishburne: 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 where he 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 most elite unit,

the 509th bomber squadron based in roswell.

- He always said that he was sworn to secrecy,

so he never shared everything that 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: The marcels say that after stopping at home

to show the debris to his wife and son,

jesse arrived at the roswell army air field

for the regular morning officer's meeting.

♪ ♪

he presented this strange debris

he'd collected to the base's commanding officer,

colonel william h. Blanchard.

Blanchard ordered his public affairs officer,

first lieutenant walter haut,

to issue an immediate press release.

- I was introduced 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,

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.

[keyboard clacking] [beeping]

- 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 discs had been found

and inspected sometime last week.

Fishburne: 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 army air field in fort worth, texas,

to present the material to brigadier general roger ramey,

head of the eighth air force,

commanding officer over the 590th bomb group.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Marcel thought he was flying to fort worth

with pieces of flying saucer debris.

♪ ♪

- major marcel would arrive at fort worth

approximately 4:00 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 material was gone.

♪ ♪

in its place was a weather balloon.

♪ ♪

[flash bulb crackles]

fishburne: The army called a hasty press conference.

It's at the moment, according to schmitt,

that the alleged cover-up begins.

[camera shutter clicks]

- "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,

never to talk about what had transpired,

and they got away with it.

Fishburne: 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 the site

where the crash was,

and what I saw, I couldn't believe.

- Marcel says in interviews,

"that's not the stuff I brought from roswell."

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 me to--they wanted some comments from me,

but I wasn't at liberty to do that.

So all I could do is keep my mouth shut,

and general ramey is the one who discussed--

told the paper-- the newspapers--I mean,

the newsmen--what it was and to forget about it.

It was nothing more than a weather observation balloon.

Of course, 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 emotion 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. He didn't--

- right.

- 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.

- Mm-hmm. - This was, like, a cleansing,

in a way, a way just to let off--this off his chest,

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

- I mean, he's incredibly courageous.

I don't--there's--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 believed, and he went out...

- Right. - And he spoke to everyone,

and that--that takes guts,

and then to deal with the blowback.

- He felt that there was an importance for it

to come out to be seen,

you know, that something did occur.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, I think he was really upset that they made him

the fall guy,

and that he couldn't believe that it 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 was--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.

Fishburne: 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 won't have answers immediately,

just looking at it. - Oh, sure, sure.

- No. - But over time,

and as we start to build the investigation,

perhaps some of these clues will--will come into focus.

This could be a game changer:

The rest of the story about what happened at roswell

from its most important witness.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 bomber 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--if this is

an actual journal from that time,

it would represent a primary source 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've 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 31, 1947,

about six weeks, seven weeks after the u.S. Army corps

put out their infamous ufo crash at roswell,

flying disc.

There's beautiful cursive handwriting,

and then, if we fast forward,

shift to this kind of erratic, mixed-case, blocky lettering,

and I can't make sense of it.

- Couple of things leap to mind immediately when you see

a change that's this 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 different mindset.

Is that by design or is that just unintentional?

- The content seems the same.

- How does the journal

compare with the timeline of the incident?

- Well, there's--there's no mention of--of roswell at all,

no mention of any events, no mention of any wreckage.

It's 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'm 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 of secrets. He took them very seriously.

- It's kind of hard to imagine the seriousness that

people back then took secrecy and took nuclear secrecy...

- Uh-huh.

- And nuclear weapons, in particular.

I mean, there were hordes of soviet spies

trying to get this information at the time.

[rocket roaring]

fishburne: In 1947, the united states

and the soviet union were already cold war enemies.

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 photo, that was in 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 debris 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 be 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 different handwriting

'cause you're in a different mental state.

Fishburne: 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 on verifying that it's real?

- I think the first step

is to authenticate the document itself.

Is this dated to 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 says?

- Yeah, exactly.

- You've got your work cut out for you on this one.

- All right.

♪ ♪

fishburne: To further his investigation

of marcel's journal,

ben smith contacts jennifer naso,

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 jesse 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 naso.

I'm a forensic document examiner,

and what I do is I receive documents that are 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 incident in 1947.

- Okay. - A man named jesse marcel, sr.

This could potentially hold marcel's private thoughts

about the incidents 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.

Fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: 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 incidents that July.

Fishburne: Marcel was the first investigator

at the roswell crash site.

While the u.S. Army

claimed the wreckage was from a weather balloon,

marcel's 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 truth we've been looking for for the last 70 years.

♪ ♪

- so I see most of the document is written

in a cursive writing. - Mm-hmm.

- 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 investigation

in order to determine.

It's important to authenticate historical documents,

because it can turn the 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 gonna do is static dating.

We know the introduction dates of certain elements

of the paper or the inks.

We can see whether or not they were available during the time

that this document was purportedly produced.

- Some of the dates in the journal itself range

from 1946 to 1948 and '49, um,

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 in 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 could 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...

- Oh. - 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?

- Um, usually it takes a few weeks.

- Oh, it does. - Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

- Especially something of this magnitude.

♪ ♪

fishburne: While jennifer naso performs

a forensics analysis of the journal,

smith asks a 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 a balloon,

it could prove that jesse marcel

was telling the truth--

that whatever crashed here was not of this world.

Fishburne: According to author kevin randle,

the weather balloon explanation

put forward by the military

at that 1947 press conference

blindsided not only jesse marcel but also

mack brazel, the rancher who found the wreckage.

- 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 what it was."

but he said, "it was something altogether different,

and much bigger."

fishburne: In this 1991 interview, jud roberts,

manager of roswell's local radio station kgfl,

says that local residents were very familiar

with the military's weather balloons.

- Oh, well, weather balloons were being launched about

a block from us every night.

So weather balloons per se

were not that--not that interesting to us.

Fishburne: 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, uh, it was an aircraft.

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

♪ ♪

- you mention roswell in most places these days

and people bring up ufos.

- It's a question, a story,

a myth that is known practically worldwide.

- Yeah.

Fishburne: Smith has asked bill doleman

to join the team of experts at the debris field.

Doleman 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.

- That's correct.

- And you've done two of them. - Two.

Fishburne: Doleman 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 we can turn up some fresh, new evidence.

♪ ♪

so what hit the debris field?

There are a lot of conflicting accounts.

A craft? 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 in

where they identify anomalies that we can then go investigate

using our standard archaeological methods.

- There isn't a u.S. Government map with this marked,

but I actually happen to have a journal

that belonged 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 a 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 crashed 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, uh, ufologists consider

the actual furrow in the ground

where, uh, some kind of craft made contact with the earth.

You were here in 2002,

and you conducted an archaeological dig here,

right--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.

Archeologists 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.

♪ ♪

- uh, 122.8.

[beeps]

fishburne: Those methods are about to get

a serious upgrade.

Joining the team are two canadian geophysicists,

colin miasga and eric johnson,

who will deploy 21st century technology

to investigate abnormalities in the terrain.

♪ ♪

- so density altitude,

6,770 feet.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 how heavy it was,

and at what velocity.

Fishburne: 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 from there.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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,

jud 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-- they had no reason to kid

anybody about standing outside of their pickup

and watching these lights go back and forth

up in the mountain.

♪ ♪

- dad looked up in the west and saw an object

that came down and had lights blinking,

and it was rather frightening to him.

Fishburne: In 1947,

paul wilmot'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,

wiggled a little bit,

and then it seemed to settle down

and take off at a rapid rate of speed.

Fishburne: 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 schmitt believes it was July 2nd.

[thunder booming]

- on the late evening of July 2nd, 1947,

there was a severe lightning storm

in the central high desert of lincoln county.

- All ranchers go out on the porch

to see where it's raining.

- Mm-hmm. - My husband,

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

and there was so much thunder and lightning

that, um, 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 once that moisture starts creeping in,

all it needs is something to lift it,

and that's going to give you incredible thunderstorms.

- Witnesses describe not only the storm,

but between the thunder claps,

they heard what sounded like an explosion,

and then seeing something

in the northern portion of the sky.

- Large, red pulsating light came directly at us,

and all I could think of was that it was a plane

which--that was in trouble.

♪ ♪

[booming]

[rain pattering]

fishburne: 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 shafts come down

because their cattle

or whatever they're raising needs water.

♪ ♪

- there was a young boy who was with mack brazel,

the son of floyd and loretta proctor.

His name was timothy dee proctor--

dee, 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 gonna 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 else coming from the wreckage.

♪ ♪

mack then takes dee 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,

it just straightened right back out.

It wouldn't--you know, wouldn't stay crushed.

Fishburne: According to roswell author

and researcher don schmitt,

loretta proctor was the first person

to see samples of the debris

that mack brazel brought back from the fields.

- 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 roswell.

♪ ♪

- mack would take samples of the debris

to wade's bar in corona

and present pieces there to fellow ranchers,

his friends, his neighbors.

Fishburne: 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, yeah.

- 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 in to roswell

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.

Fishburne: 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

report this to the roswell army air field,

the 509th bomb group.

It sounds like a matter

they need to know about most urgently.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 right--as of now, I don't know what it was.

Fishburne: 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 go 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.

Fishburne: 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 has happened,

and the military was waiting for him.

They nabbed brazel,

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 asked him the same questions over

and over and over again,

24 hours around the clock, over a weather balloon.

♪ ♪

fishburne: According to alleged eyewitness accounts,

in the days that followed,

the military swept through roswell and corona,

threatening scores of individuals

who 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 of people unknown wanted him

to change off of the original story.

♪ ♪

- and in his total frustration,

joyce takes him off the air.

♪ ♪

- I said to him, "the little green men,"

and that's where he said,

"yeah, only they weren't green."

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

fishburne: At the roswell crash site,

smith is with a team of experts

searching for evidence of the wreckage

found here in 1947.

- Best plan for us

would be to start getting our multispec data

going in the area.

We can cover a broad--broad area,

get the highest resolution,

most up-to-date aerial imagery.

- We also have that multispectral camera.

- Oh, cool. So you can do both at once.

- Yeah. - Oh, that's--

- so in one flight,

we're getting multispectral imagery and the 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--

- mm-hmm.

- So that commonly thought spot is just down in this area.

Fishburne: Archaeologist bill doleman

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 distinct changes.

♪ ♪

- look at that. - Wow, that is--

- here's the original location of interest.

Then, there's a big linear feature we're interested in.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Just 800 meters from where jesse marcel

examined the debris,

the 1954 photos shows

what could be several long furrows carved into the earth.

♪ ♪

- there are delineations in the soil that--

from a northwestern to a southeastern direction,

that match witness descriptions of something

falling from the sky,

hitting the earth, skipping, and scattering debris.

That's what we see in--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 this--these linear features here?

- Well, we'll send the drone over there, for sure.

Fishburne: If the team can show something with more force

and velocity than a weather balloon hit here,

it would be a major discovery.

[motors buzzing]

♪ ♪

- any time there's differences in soil, um,

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.

- On the entire site. - Yeah.

- Then, we can turn on the multispectral imagery.

So we have--the reds are little to no vegetation.

- Uh-huh.

- Blue is gonna be kind of dense vegetation,

and kinda everything in between.

Fishburne: But after hours of searching,

the team gets disappointing news.

- At the moment,

we're not picking up

any, uh, distinct feature near the furrow.

♪ ♪

- so the mutlispectral imaging

didn't really show us any anomalies,

other than trenches that we've already dug.

- Yeah, nothing that can't be unexplained at the moment.

- Yeah.

Fishburne: The team concludes the archival image

had a defect.

- What else can we throw at that--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 sub-surface information.

Fishburne: Next, colin miasga will use a magnetometer,

a tool that can detect changes

in the earth's magnetic field.

- So if 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 is gonna pick up anything with iron, magnetite.

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

- Uh, we've got--we've got the ground-penetrating radar.

- Okay.

- And the gamma ray spectrometer

to measure for radioactive material.

[clicking]

so anything that's been in really high altitude or space

is gonna be exposed to a lot more radiation,

and that radiation is gonna stay with that material,

and then it's gonna give a strong signature

when it hits the ground,

and it's gonna stay there forever.

[clicking]

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 interesting anomaly.

As we were walking around,

I was doing the magnetometer survey.

So now, this is the magnetometer.

But 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.

Fishburne: 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 crashed here.

- So given its possible depth,

does that age it out of our 70-year time span?

- I won't be able to say until we start digging,

and--and that's-- I'm gonna leave that

to the archaeologists

to--to start dating as--as they dig down.

So this was one of the high points,

hovering between 10, 15 nanoteslas per meter.

Fishburne: Colin marks the perimeters 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 this spot.

- So the flags here outline

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.

♪ ♪

[hammer clanging]

fishburne: After stringing a grid

across the site of the anomaly,

esperanza beings her work,

collecting a range of samples

and documenting the location of each.

♪ ♪

- so the strongest signature was over

in this square right here?

- Yes. - Okay.

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

Fishburne: 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, uh, anomaly.

- That's out. There's just no volcanic--

- we've eliminated a campfire anomaly?

- Yes. There's no fire hearth.

- 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 matches 1947,

then we know that something--potentially

an impact-- froze its signature to 1947.

- Yeah.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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.

- Hello.

Fishburne: With no proof about what crashed--spaceship,

weather balloon, or something else--

ben believes joe might have a piece of the puzzle

that could help unravel the mystery of roswell.

♪ ♪

- thanks for 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 phenomena to investigate,

and, um, in particular,

the first people to encounter the debris

on the field--your grandfather,

mack, um, being the, you know, patient zero,

the first person to... - Right.

- To encounter this debris,

uh, 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--your grandfather, mack.

- Well, everything I heard was from my dad.

- Okay.

- You know, he told me what he knew

and--and what he experienced with it

and then, you know, what had--mack, you know,

the few things 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 went 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, uh, 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, uh--

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 mack

on the ranch, you know, the rainstorms or whatever.

They'd be riding, they'd see a little piece,

and he'd pick it up.

- So then, of course, riding horseback,

you see lots of things, you know,

and I picked up a few scraps,

and, uh--that the army hadn't--hadn't picked up.

♪ ♪

and I made--I'd bring them in my chaps pocket

and put them in a cigar box down at the barn.

- His, uh, description of some of the stuff is like tinfoil,

but it was, you know, just a lot tougher.

- When you bend it over, like a crease,

and it straightened right back out.

- This is the way my dad put it to me:

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

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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...

- Yeah. - By the, uh--

by the military police, or somebody from the base.

- Yeah. He just said two guys in a car.

- Two guys in a car. - That's all he ever told me.

- Yeah.

- He didn't say whether they were government.

He just said that there was two guys that showed up in a car,

and they said that they weren't gonna take it,

but they weren't leaving without it.

- Did they ever identify themselves?

- No.

- Well, that's--

- you know, and the other thing you gotta understand is--

is that mack gave his word he wouldn't talk about it.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, 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,

was there anything ever in your life

that would make you question what your dad saw?

- 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. - Mm-hmm.

- He's not gonna 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 rumint--what's called rumored intelligence,

as we say in the business-- that mack or bill, your dad,

hid some of the material on their property,

and some might even claim here, on this property.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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.

♪ ♪

- just to get a little more specific,

I think there was a claim at one point

that, um, 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 I don't 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 field,

it could be a bombshell development.

- They hid it underneath this house right here.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Investigator ben smith is meeting

with joe brazel,

the reclusive grandson of mack brazel,

the rancher who first stumbled upon the mysterious

crash debris at 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.

Fishburne: Jesse marcel also never disclosed

everything he'd seen

or the full story of the cover-up.

- They hid it underneath this house.

Fishburne: Meanwhile, back in new york,

handwriting expert jennifer naso 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 to solve this puzzle.

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

♪ ♪

I use specialized equipment in order to analyze

to see 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 document.

♪ ♪

in order to conduct a handwriting analysis,

I do a side-by-side comparison 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.

♪ ♪

fishburne: Jennifer naso 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 we 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.

Fishburne: 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 of the debris as souvenirs.

Some researchers have claimed that your father or mack

might have buried something

or hidden it under a cement slab.

- Yeah, well, I can show you right here.

This is--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 just like dirt under there.

- It is. - Yep.

- In fact, when this house was first built, uh,

of course, they put the hardwood floors in,

but this was built on the dirt.

The only slab that was ever put in this house,

as far as, uh--

is this rock slab right here for the old fireplace.

- Yeah. - And that's it,

and there's nothing under there.

That's--that's on dirt.

It's--it's been there since 1902,

long before the ufo.

- Yeah. - I can put the rumor

to rest that there's nothing underneath

the cement slab here, 'cause...

- Yeah. - There is no cement slab.

♪ ♪

there's no truth to their rumor whatsoever.

When they took that cigar box he had,

they took everything he had.

I guarantee,

if there had been something buried underneath this house,

my dad 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, uh, sort of impacted

the way your--your dad approached the story?

- What it did was it put a fear into him that--that, you know,

something might happen to one of his family members.

- Yeah.

- Because they--you know, they focus on the monetary...

- Mm-hmm.

- And think he has a piece of it,

and it's worth so much money.

- Right. - You know, and then--

so he got real reluctant about talking about it,

and therefore you don't 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--

- yeah.

- The people that they were, and, uh, two, that--you know,

you've confirmed some things in the timeline for me

that make me think that it's reasonable for me

to continue the search, continue to use resources.

- Well, something happened.

'cause they spent a lot of money

trying to figure out what happened,

and they spent a lot of money hiding what really did happen.

- Is there any other information that I could use

to help me in my-- in my investigation

to get--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, uh, typing their names into my phone

so at least I can-- - I'll give you--

I'll give you one name.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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 of 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 the windmill.

- Hmm.

- And he said it was just a flash.

It was there, and he just, like,

never got out of the way quick enough,

and then whenever he looked up, it was going, gone.

- That's a story that I have not heard in connection

to these events before.

- It hasn't been out... - Yeah.

- A whole lot.

- Yeah. - But he swore by it.

And when this man said something, he...

- Yeah. - 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 mack brazel?

- I've seen that name. - Oh, sure.

That's the one that tell them about the ufo falling.

- I remember mack. - Oh, you do?

- Mm-hmm. - Yeah?

Can you tell me what you remember about mack?

- He was a cowboy.

Mack had a reputation for being honest.

He had a reputation for working hard.

♪ ♪

he just was a hardworking cowboy.

Fishburne: Sherrill perkins' parents owned the drugstore

from which mack brazel called the sheriff

to report finding 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.

- I remember conversations about it.

I probably was not there when that call 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 stay 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 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.

- So what about the proctor family?

- Well, dee proctor was in my class.

Started first grade together

and graduated from high school together.

Fishburne: 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 what they'd 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 crushed.

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, he never ever talked about it.

- Hmm.

- 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 this 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.

- Uh, why the hesitancy to share with me his name?

- It's privacy.

- Yeah. - I don't know.

I can ask them if they would be willing to talk,

but I can bet you that they would not.

- Yeah, well, put in a good word for me.

- I will. - Uh, just, uh, you know,

if you could, I would-- - I will.

We're still pretty private about protecting the people

that--who have been most affected.

[rain pattering]

- as I was leaving, one of the seniors slipped me

the name of someone related to another eyewitness.

The roswell incident is like an intricate puzzle,

and I finally feel like the pieces

are starting to fall into place.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

fishburne: Investigator ben smith heads

to the office of handwriting expert

jennifer naso,

who has spent nearly a month

doing a forensic examination of the journal

to find out if it is genuine or a 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, the--

for me, uh, 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.

♪ ♪

ooh.

[knocking]

- jennifer? - Hi.

- Hey. Nice to see you again.

- Good to see you. - This is jesse.

- Hi, jesse. Jennifer naso.

Nice to meet you.

- Jennifer, nice to meet you. - Uh, 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.

- Mm-hmm.

This is consistent with non-ballpoint pen ink.

- Oh, okay.

- And the way I can tell 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.

- Okay.

♪ ♪

- and the characteristics commonly seen

with ballpoint pen ink

is you don't see that ink bleed into the paper.

It kind of sits more on top and has a sheen to it.

- Oh, okay. - And on curvatures,

you see what we call burr striations

that move from inside to outside on a curve.

So what I'm seeing throughout the document

that the entirety of the document is created

with that non-ballpoint pen ink...

- Okay.

- That is consistent with the time period

which this document was purportedly created.

- It is? - Yes.

♪ ♪

the next thing I looked at was the paper itself.

- Okay. - And what I'm looking for

are optical brighteners.

- Okay. - Optical brighteners are added

in the paper manufacturing process,

and it's to make the paper look nice and white and bright.

- Sure. - So the way to look

for optical brighteners

is to look under uv radiation, and what should happen,

if it contains optical brighteners,

is that the paper should luminesce.

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 know contains

optical brighteners under--right on top.

- Wow.

- So that technology began in around 1950.

- Correct. - Well, that makes sense,

'cause 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 period.

- Great. Okay.

- So did you find anything like a watermark

that might also provide clues about the time period?

- Right, so there was 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, look at that! - Yeah, I see it.

- You 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.

- Okay.

- And a quick internet search revealed that juniata

is a university in pennsylvania.

- Interesting.

That was the area

my grandfather went to intelligence school.

- In pennsylvania?

He went to intelligence school in pennsylvania?

- Yeah, he was actually a member in the very first class

of the very first intelligence school.

- Oh, really? - When he finished that class,

he turned around and they had him teach that class to--

- 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 be '41, '42, something like that.

- Yeah, it was after the war had already started.

- Exactly. Yeah.

He joined right--right--well, right after pearl harbor.

- To sum up, this document does appear to be consistent

with the time period with which it's purported to be written.

- That's half the battle right there.

- So I did a handwriting comparison with the journal...

- Mm-hmm.

- And the known specimens I had for jesse marcel.

I will say that in flipping through the journals,

the handwriting did appear to be freely

and naturally executed. - Okay.

- It does not appear to be deliberate or hesitant...

- Okay. - 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. - Oh, wow.

♪ ♪

fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: The investigation moves

into uncharted territory...

- It negates the skeptical arguments

about the roswell case.

Fishburne: With new leads

that have never been explored before.

- Actually, it raises more questions than answers then.

- Yeah.

Fishburne: Was the mysterious journal jesse marcel

kept secret written in code

to hide its meaning from the government?

- To a cryptographer,

this indicates a certain kind of cipher.

Fishburne: 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.

Fishburne: What else was jesse marcel hiding from the world?

[indistinc speaking]

fishburne: The investigation uncovers

shocking possibilities.

- You think the debris could still be at the house?

- I know it could be.

Fishburne: Could it change what we know about roswell?

I'm laurence fishburne,

thanks for watching "history's greatest mysteries".