[Kent Jeffrey is author of the Roswell Declaration and Coordinator of the International Roswell Initiative. The following statement was released August 9, 1995 in response to the General Accounting Office report on Roswell. Kent Jeffrey can be reached by email at roswelldec@aol.com, by phone or fax at (404) 240-0655, or by regular mail at 3105 Gables Drive, Atlanta, GA 30319.]
The General Accounting Office (GAO) report on the 1947 Roswell incident was released on July 28, 1995. The report consists of an eight-page letter to Congressman Steven Schiff of New Mexico and includes nine pages of appendices. In summary, the report states that an extensive search for records was conducted and nothing of consequence was found. Noteworthy is that the GAO report refers to the 1994 Air Force report only briefly and offers no evidence to support the Air Force report's Project Mogul balloon hypothesis. The GAO report also contains no significant revelations and no conclusion.
Unlike the 1994 Air Force report, which represents a selective and obviously biased presentation of the facts, the GAO report is objective and straightforward. Significantly, it is admitted in the report that "our search of government records was complicated by the fact that some records we wanted to review were missing and there was not always an explanation." Most significant is that the outgoing messages from Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) for the period from October 1946 through December 1949 were destroyed without authorization. Those messages would most probably have contained the key to what really occurred at Roswell in 1947.
It could be strictly coincidental that those records are missing. However, in view of the conflicting stories told by the military at the time (the two July 8, 1947, press releases), the absence of the records is very "convenient" and therefore suspicious. Also interesting is the fact that no documentation for the 1395th Military Police Company could be located. Presumably, this would have been the outfit responsible for guarding the debris.
During the course of the investigation, the GAO did query such agencies as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC) for records on Roswell. The GAO investigators, however, were not given direct access to the files of those agencies. Instead, the GAO received brief written responses, but was not able to independently verify the information contained in them.
The Roswell event, whatever its cause, was one of the biggest public relations fiascos in military history. Given the government's penchant for keeping records, the fact that not one single official military file or record can be found to document this event strains all credibility. While the GAO report provides no definitive answers, it does bring to light the absence of certain critical evidence, thereby raising new questions and underscoring the need for further and more thorough investigation into this unusual event.
As coordinator of the International Roswell Initiative, I assure you that in the months ahead, we will be redoubling our efforts, both in the investigation of the Roswell case itself and in the effort to make it resoundingly clear to our political leaders that the vast majority of people desire a more open and candid U.S. government policy concerning the entire UFO phenomenon.
Kent Jeffrey
Original file name: .CNI - GAO Report.Jeffrey 8.17
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