Roswell 1947 - mass media

GAO Checking Report of Flying Saucer Crash

Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON -- Congress' investigative branch is studying whether the government covered up a story alleging that bodies of alien space voyagers were taken from a crashed flying saucer found near Roswell, N.M., in 1947.

After the purported crash of the spacecraft, the bodies of the extraterrestrial visitors were said by conspiracy theorists to have been autopsied and then secretly flown to an Air Force base in Ohio.

Even though the "Roswell Incident" has been dismissed by the Defense Department as nothing more than UFO fantasizing triggered by the discovery of a downed weather balloon, the General Accounting Office has begun searching for documents to prove allegations that the Air Force suppressed information sought by Rep. Steven Schiff, R - N.M.

Schiff is a member of the House Government Operations Committee, which oversees the GAO.

GAO spokeswoman Laura Kopelson said the office's investigation, first reported in the Albuquerque Journal on Thursday, stemmed from a meeting in October between Schiff and GAO Controller General Charles Bowsher. Schiff complained then that the Defense Department had been "unresponsive" to his inquiries about the 1947 incident.

Kopelson said "as far as I know, only one investigator had been assigned" to the case, and that not enough work had been done to report results back to Schiff. At another point, Kopelson said "the people doing it are either on sick leave or are unavailable."

Kopelson said Schiff had asked the GAO "to see if there is any evidence that information regarding UFOs had been suppressed" after the Roswell incident.

The crash of a mysterous object 75 miles northwest of Roswell, which the Air Force later claimed was a weather balloon equipped with a radar-reflecting device, was the subject of several books and remains many UFO buffs' greatest riddle.

UFO buffs contend the incident marked the beginning of a government conspiracy to suppress evidence of alien life.