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CNN Larry King Live

Do UFOs Exist?

Aired July 01, 2003 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roswell, '47. One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Tonight: What really happened at Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago this week? Did the United States military cover up a UFO crash landing, complete with alien bodies? Do UFOs exist? Have they been here? Tonight we return to Roswell with those who were there. Walter Haut -- he was the information officer at Roswell Army Air Field. He wrote the now famous July 8, 1947, press release that said a flying disk had been recovered. Glenn Dennis -- he worked at a Roswell funeral home and says someone claiming to be the airfield's mortuary officer called to ask him about small caskets. Nancy Easley (ph) Johnston -- her father was in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. Jesse Marcel, Jr. -- his father was a Roswell intelligence officer. He says he saw debris samples his father brought home from the crash site.

And later, Don Schmitt, one of the world's leading UFO experts; Leslie Kean, a journalist investigating the incident known as "Pennsylvania's Roswell"; Dr. William Doleman, archeologist, who conducted tests on the Roswell site last year; and Julie Shuster (ph), Walter Haut's daughter and executive director of the International UFO Museum at Roswell. All next on LARRY KING LIVE.

By the way, we'll be seeing clips tonight and we refer you to the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence," that's now available on DVD, and we thank them for their help in this program tonight.

We start in Roswell, New Mexico with two guys who were there, Walter Haut, who was the United States Air Force public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field, and Glenn Dennis, who was working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico.

What call did you get, Glenn?

GLENN DENNIS, FUNERAL WORKER CALLED BY MILITARY RE '47 CRASH: I received a call from the mortuary officer, informing...

KING: Go ahead. I'm hearing someone else talking. Go ahead. Go ahead, Glenn. Continue. All right, I think that's Walter talking. I think we're trying to talk to Walter at the same time we're talking to Glenn. One at a time. Glenn, what call did you get?

DENNIS: I received a call from the mortuary officer at the base, asking me how many infant hermetically sealed caskets we had, three- and-a-half to four feet, in stock. And I told him -- I said...

KING: What did you make of that?

DENNIS: ... we only had one. It's not military. But I said, I can call the Amarillo, Texas, coffin company by 3:00 this afternoon and have all you need by noon tomorrow (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I said, What's going on out there? And he said, That's not important. Then he calls me back later and he wants to know how embalming chemical would alter the tissues, the stomach contents, and what was our preparation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bodies laying out in the elements for days. I said, Sir, we have to -- the mortuary officer has to tell us what he wants and how he wants it and what procedure he wants us to follow. And he became a little bit upset. But anyway, that was the way that it all started off with me right there.

KING: All right, Walter, what supposedly happened at the air base, where you were the public information officer?

WALTER HAUT, FIRST TO MAKE 1947 CRASH INCIDENT PUBLIC: We came up with the fact that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and Colonel Blanchard (ph) told me to put it out on every medium I can put it out on, which I did as best I could. And I went home that evening, and THAT telephone and everything that they can use was running completely on -- I don't know what kind of value, but I think it ultimately quit at about 3:00 o'clock in the morning. It was...

KING: Now, did...

HAUT: ... a long -- go ahead.

KING: Were you ever asked to countermand that release? Were you ever asked to change what you were first asked to say?

HAUT: No, I was not told to change it. I put out the facts that we had in our possession, a flying saucer.

KING: Did you, Walter, ever see any of the wreckage?

HAUT: No, sir.

KING: What was said in the days subsequent? Was there a lot of talk about this? Did people at the airfield say they had seen any of these bodies or seen any of these creatures? Was it a wide amount of discussion at Roswell?

HAUT: No. I think you have to take in the idea that the people on the base were accustomed to keeping their mouths shut, if I may use that expression. The need just to talk about information doesn't fit (ph). People that were working on the base knew what was going on in the aircraft that they were working on. The persons like myself, the flymen, we were accustomed to taking off at certain times and turning around and keep on going.

KING: Well, we're going to -- before we continue questioning, we're going to show you a clip from the Sci-Fi Channel documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD. And we'll come back with Walter and Glenn. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Outside of Roswell, southwest of Highway 285, William Woody (ph) and his father reported seeing a fiery object descending toward earth.

KEVIN D. RANDLE, PH.D., AUTHOR, "OPERATION ROSWELL": What's interesting about the Woody aspect of it is that he and his father the next day, or a day or two later, tried to go out to see if they could find where the thing fell and ran into the military cordon. So we've got an interesting little corroboration there that the military was interested in it, and they were turned back by the cordons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I know that Walter is a little under the weather, so I'll just have a question or two left for you, Walter, and let you get out and get some help. Did not the next day General Roger Ramey (ph) in Fort Worth say that the object was a weather balloon?

HAUT: Yes. That's what came out. The general just put in a -- it's -- You're wrong when you talk about it. It's just a weather balloon, and forget it. That's about...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: The key question for you, Walter, is, what do you believe?

HAUT: Well, I believe, personally, that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and that's the whole sum -- the story, as far as I was concerned.

KING: So you believe aliens crashed and that -- and that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, at the air base. Walter, I hope you feel better. I thank you for spending some time with us.

Glenn Dennis will remain. Other guests will join us. Be well, Walter.

We'll return with more on the incredible events of 56 years ago at Roswell, New Mexico, still one of the most talked-about events ever. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The strange wreckage that Brazel (ph) discovered spanned an area 300 yards wide by a mile long. That parcel of land, known to investigators as the debris field, is where some believe an extraterrestrial craft blew apart and fell to earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico. Joining us from Colorado Springs is Nancy Easley Johnston, the daughter of Edwin Easley (ph), the Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. And in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel, who was an intelligence officer at Roswell. He says he saw debris samples that his father brought home.

Glenn, back to you. What was the follow-up? What was the eventual result? Did they ever order any of these caskets? Glenn?

DENNIS: Yes?

KING: Did they order -- did the Army Air Force ever order anything from the funeral home?

DENNIS: No, sir, they did not. They did not order anything.

KING: How do you know the Air Force was calling you?

DENNIS: Well, because I knew the mortuary officer out there very well. We were close friends.

KING: Oh.

DENNIS: And I knew all the people out there. We worked at the hospital. We had the only ambulance business, and we were involved quite a bit out at the base. Also, we had a military contract. So I knew them all.

KING: Do you agree with Walter? Do you think that a -- that a foreign object landed there with aliens at Roswell 56 years ago?

HAUT: Well, I agree with him. One reason I agree with him, because all the ranchers and farmers knew what weather balloons were. And every time they found one, there's a little instrument on the end. And if they turned that in, they got 25 bucks. When this happened, they had no idea what it was. They filled their pick-ups full of metal -- I mean, full of the debris, brought it in to the Roswell Army Air Field. And that's where all the investigation started, right there.

KING: All right, Nancy, your father was Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up. What did he -- how old were you at the time?

NANCY JOHNSTON, DAD HEADED ROSWELL CRASH SITE SECURITY: I was a year-and-a-half old, so I remember very little!

(LAUGHTER)

KING: What did he tell you later on? JOHNSTON: My father was reluctant to ever talk about this incident. Once my sister and I discovered that an incident had occurred that he had been part of, when we asked him about it, he always told us that he had promised President Truman that he would not discuss it. And he stuck with that up until the end -- until almost the very end.

KING: Doesn't by the fact that he wouldn't say anything tell you that something happened?

JOHNSTON: I'm sure something happened. I am not privy to the knowledge of what exactly happened, but I'm sure something happened.

KING: And Jesse Marcel, Jr., your father was an intelligence officer. You said you saw debris samples that he brought home? What did you see?

DR. JESSE MARCEL, JR., DAD SHOWED HIM CRASH SITE DEBRIS: Yes, Larry. You know, my dad was the -- one of the intelligence officers for the 509th Bomb Group. And as such, it was his job to investigate unusual events like what happened out there. And he was called out one night to the ranch where this thing had landed, picked up some of the debris. He and one of the CIC (ph) agents picked up some of the debris and loaded it in the back of our 1942 Buick. And since our house was on the way to the air base, my dad just swung by the house to show my mother and myself what they had found out there because he realized this was something very, very unusual, something unique, as a matter of fact, because he didn't think we would ever see anything like this again, which, of course, I have not.

And he drove by the house, put it on kitchen floor, woke my mother and myself us up so we could look at this. And we got out in the kitchen and looked -- I looked at the debris that was on the floor, and there was just a lot of metal parts, metallic, like, foil- like debris, some I-beam material and some black plastic material. And the first thing he wanted us to do was to look for electronic components, such as vacuum tubes, resistors or condensers because I think he said something like this is part of a flying saucer. And being a young kid at the time, I didn't know what a flying saucer was, but I sure realized later.

But I examined some of the debris, some of the foil. I didn't -- picked it up, looked at it. Didn't try to bend or tear it or stress it in any way. But I found something very unusual. There were some I-beams that were about a foot, a foot-and-a-half long. And along the inner surface of the I-beams, you could see some sort of writing. And there was kind of a purple metallic hue, as you could see very well if you held this up to the light. And I thought at first this was like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but later thought it was not hieroglyphics at all but more like geometric symbols.

KING: I want to pick up there in a minute, but I want to -- hold on one second, Jesse. I want to toss to film clip of your father talking a little about this. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JESSE MARCEL, SR., 509TH BOMB GROUP: One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all air activities, that it was not a weather balloon nor an aircraft nor a missile. It was something else, of which -- we didn't know what it was. There were just fragments strewn all over the area. So we proceeded to pick up the parts. A lot of it had a lot of little numbers with symbols that -- to me, I call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them. They could not be read. They were just like symbols of something that meant something. These little numbers could not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn that, would not burn. See, that stuff weighs nothing. It's not any thicker than tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Jesse, subsequently, did your father come home and tell you and your mother to forget everything?

MARCEL: Well, he sure did. As I understood, he flew the material to Fort Worth to General Roger Ramey, who was 8th Air Force commander, for his information. And when my dad got back the next day or the day after, he sat my mother and myself down and told us under no uncertain terms were we to ever discuss this issue again. Of course, here I'm talking about, but -- but that was very definitely one of the commands that he gave us, is not to talk about it, not with your friends, not with anybody, not even family members.

KING: So the obvious, Jesse, is what do you believe?

MARCEL: Well, I think it's something very extraordinary. I don't know what it was. But since that time, I -- and thinking more about this, I can't help but believe that it was something that came from another civilization, much like a space probe that we're sending to other planets right now and -- because the material was unique, like I say. And I do know it was not a weather balloon or even a mogul (ph) balloon, like the Air Force later said, because the material was totally different.

KING: Nancy, what do you -- I know your father said, Say nothing, and he wouldn't tell you what, and Truman and all that. What do you believe?

JOHNSTON: I believe that something obviously happened out there in the countryside close to Roswell that the government has tried very hard all these years to keep us from understanding and knowing about. Since I was not a witness, I have no personal knowledge of what it was, but it had to have been something very big at that time that the government wanted covered up.

KING: Now, Glenn, you still live -- you live in Roswell. Do you believe there's...

DENNIS: That's true...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Do you believe there's still stuff there? DENNIS: Well, they go out every year, every year after all of the snows and the winter. These government people go out with Geiger counters and everything else, and they have this all marked off up there. And I don't know if they found anything else or not because they do not consult us anymore at all. But I do know the ranchers and I know people up there because our mortuary has been involved up there with most of it -- I mean, with the people there, and very seldom will we ever talk about it. Once in a while, we'll sit down and mention something, but not very often.

KING: Jesse, you think the government set your father up to be kind of a fall guy here?

MARCEL: Well, he was a good soldier. He was just following orders. And I'm sure that he was told to bring the message home to the family that -- that not to talk about it because, apparently, somebody found out that we actually saw the material. And you know, years later, I asked him about the possibility of something being still out there, and he said, No, no, no. They vacuumed that place up, period.

KING: Now, you stay with us, Jesse. Nancy, thanks very much for being with us. We'll hold Glenn, and we'll be -- thank you, Nancy. We appreciate your input. We'll come back with more. We'll meet our full panel later. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 1947, Americans found their skies filled with all sorts of strange flying objects.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The UFO phenomenon really took off, actually, in June of 1947 in the state of Washington when a pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold saw many objects going in formation at a very, very high speed by Mount Rainier in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arnold said that nine silvery objects he'd seen looked like saucers skipping over a pond. The next day, his story was front-page news, and a new term entered the American lexicon: flying saucer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP - JUNE, 1997)

COL. JOHN HAYNES, U.S. AIR FORCE: Over that period of time, dummies were dropped all around there, and I think it's logical to assume that the people there saw Air Force ambulances come out, they saw gurneys come out, they saw body bags come out because the dummies were put into the body bags to protect them. They saw people in pith helmet, they saw people in shorts out there brushing the bushes, looking for the remnants of the balloons. And when you put all that stuff together and spin it, you find that it fits perfectly with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico, 56 year ago. Staying with us in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel. Joining us now from Roswell is Donald Schmitt. Donald Schmitt is the former co-director of J. Alan (ph) Hynek Center for UFO Studies. He's the author of dozens of articles about UFOs, two best- selling books about Roswell. In San Francisco is Leslie Kean. Leslie's an investigative journalist, director of investigation of the Coalition for Freedom of Information. She's looking into connections of the 1965 incident in Kecksburg (ph), Pennsylvania's. It's been called "Pennsylvania's Roswell." She's not an expert on Roswell. We'll go to her in a little while. Dr. William Doleman is an archaeologist, principal investigator for the University of New Mexico's School of Contract Archaeology. And he conducted a Sci-Fi Channel-sponsored archaeological dig at the purported UFO crash site in Roswell in September of 2002.

Donald, what is your read on all of this?

DONALD SCHMITT, FORMER CO-DIR. HYNEK CTR. FOR UFO STUDIES: Well, I think what has impressed me most of all, especially within the recent years, pertaining to the investigation, as even Nancy Strickland (ph) was describing, the level of extreme pressure for these people who were involved to retain their silence, to keep this event, keep the experience with them for as long as they did, withholding the information even from their loved ones, their wives, their children. And as you all know that a deathbed testimony is admissible in a court of law as physical evidence, and sadly, that's something that we are concentrating on right now. And to date, not a single one of these people on their deathbeds are describing any type of weather balloon, rocket, aircraft, anything conventional. Invariably, they all describe the bodies recovered, as well. And I'm not talking about anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies.

KING: Dr. Doleman, what do you believe?

WILLIAM DOLEMAN, PH.D., LED 2002 ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG: I believe that, clearly, something happened or it wouldn't have made the news. At the same time, I kind of maintain a position in which I'm a scientific investigator looking for physical evidence, and I'm not in the business of evaluating the testimony of various people. Instead, I'm engaged in a project that, as far as I know, represents the first intensive effort at what -- at least -- to find some kind of physical evidence of whatever happened back there in 1947. And so in terms of what I believe, it's really kind of irrelevant because what I believe is that scientific investigation is the best way to go about looking for that physical evidence.

KING: Jesse, why do you believe, if it occurred, the Army wanted to cover it up? What's the big deal? Why not tell us there is life somewhere else?

MARCEL: I wish I knew the answer to that question because, for some reason, they are not ready for the public to know what's really out there, in spite of the fact that we're sending probes ourselves to other planets. And obviously, there are civilizations out there that are far advanced of us and can send probes here. So I really don't know the answer to the questions, why they're trying to keep it a secret.

KING: Leslie, what happened at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965?

LESLIE KEAN, JOURNALIST INVESTIGATING "PA'S ROSWELL": Well, something came down in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965. An object was seen in the sky. There was a meteorite that night, and it went through a number of different states. Citizens of the community saw -- some of them saw it actually make a few turns. It came in fairly slowly and landed in the woods near Kecksburg. A number of witnesses actually saw the object on the ground. Others saw a very extensive military presence come into the region. They cordoned off the area. They kept people away and eventually carted away something on the back of a flatbed truck.

This is what the people of the area tell us. The Air Force has told us that nothing came down that night. So we have a contradiction here, and I'm interested in trying to access information that will solve that mystery.

KING: What do you believe?

KEAN: I don't know what it was. There's no way to know. We know that something came down. It could have been a Russian probe. We don't know what it was, and I'm not in a position to formulate an opinion. I just want -- I believe that the people have the right to the information, the people of Pennsylvania, in particular, who have really suffered a lot by having that information denied to them. And I just think people have a right to know. It was, you know, 1965. Why not tell people what happened there?

KING: We're going to take a break. Jesse Marcel, thanks very much for joining us.

When we come back, our panel will remain, and we'll also meet Julie Schuster, the executive director of the International UFO Museum. We'll also be including your phone calls. We're discussing Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago.

Charles Gibson of "Good Morning America" is tomorrow night's special guest. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so Ramey told the press that all this stuff was, was simply a weather balloon. And that was what most of the press published the next day.

SCHMITT: They never saw the real material. The real material went on to Washington at that time. So Marcel is ordered to pose with the substituted radar reflector balloon. So the first press release, there was a flying saucer, and six hours later, We're sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It's just a weather balloon. The question is, which press release is the true story?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Major Marcel (ph) and Captain Sheridan Cavet (ph) traveled to the Foster Ranch and spent a day gathering the strange wreckage. Marcel was so intrigued by the debris that on his way back to the base, he stopped by his home to show his family what he'd found.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My dad came into my room, very excited and he wanted to show us some material that he'd found. I think he -- the inclination or the intimation there was this was part of a flying saucer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Discussing the events in Roswell, New Mexico.

Joining us now is Julie Shuster. She is the executive director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. The earlier guest, Walter Haut, is her father.

What is the -- what did we see at the museum, Julie?

JULIE SHUSTER, EXEC. DIR., INTL. UFO MUSEUM AT ROSWELL: We have a lot of things to offer and one of the things that we try to do is show what Roswell looked like in 1947, give our visitors a glimpse of what Roswell looked like and one of the things we do is our radio display with the teletype and the audio control that show what the radio station may have looked like where Mac Brazel was interviewed.

KING: Do you show anything resembling what might have been captured there?

SHUSTER: We have a lot of artists' renditions of what the saucers may have looked like. We do have a few other displays that give some interpretations.

KING: We know what your father thinks. What do you think?

SHUSTER: Now if I said I agreed with my father, because he's sitting here -- no -- I believe that something did happen. These were people with incredible integrity and very conservative and if they said something happened, something happened.

KING: Donald Schmitt, why would the government -- this has been asked over the years, every time we hear about UFOs, what are they hiding? For what purpose?

SCHMITT: Well, in just looking at the history, specifically of New Mexico in 1947, I'm amazed when I especially lecture on the college circuit when you ask where was first atomic bomb detonated and invariably most people say Japan, whereas anybody here in New Mexico, historically knows it happened right here, just about 150 miles west of Roswell.

Roswell was the hot bed of all military research and testing at that time, the captured V-2 rockets and if we go by the Air Force's Project Blue Book records, which would suggest that there were more UFO sightings here in 1947 than anywhere else, whereas there were also more Soviet spies here...

KING: But the question is, why would they keep the information from the public, assuming it's all true?

SCHMITT: Well, that would be part of it, the fact that it immediately became a concern of the high ranking officials at the Pentagon that if this was of anything of a foreign design and it was some new intelligence, something that could potentially be reverse engineered, replicated, that it would become an immediate race with the Soviets, something that we possessed and hopefully they did not.

KING: And that wouldn't be the thinking now. So we assume that this information is passed along, so why doesn't -- Rumsfeld release it?

SCHMITT: Well, as you have had former President Carter and former President Clinton, the question could be posed to either one of them, whereas they themselves tried to gain access to information, actually tried to release information specifically on UFOs and specifically on Roswell and yet they failed.

It is our position -- my partner Thomas Carey and I -- that it is still a cover up of ignorance, that they have physical proof, but they still don't have the answers as to from where, from why and from whom.

KING: Glenn, why do you think they are not releasing it?

DENNIS: Well, from what I've been told, and being interviewed, the problem is that whoever has this energy could control the whole world and if we don't have the elements on our planet or anything else to reproduce these, then it could be a problem. I've heard this from three or four different sources and maybe that's true. I don't know. If you remember, the Orson Welles deal.

KING: "War of the Worlds."

DENNIS: Yes.

KING: Yes.

DENNIS: And they didn't know if that would happen in New Mexico or around the world, or anything else if we were being invaded by aliens.

KING: Before we go to calls, Dr. Doleman, what do we know, know. What can you definitively scientifically say?

DOLEMAN: Well, we were funded by the Sci-Fi Channel back in September of last year to conduct an archaeological test excavation at the putative Roswell impact site, which is one of two or three sites. We were led to that location by Don Schmitt and what we did was implement some fairly standard archaeology test excavations methods in a staged research project to look for evidence of the sort that had been originally reported by the eyewitnesses and that primarily includes debris, which was ostensibly all cleaned up, and a gouge or furrow mark in the ground that was made by something that hit the ground and then skipped back up in the air and came back down in another locations. So the methods that we used to look for that involved geophysical prospection using electromagnetic conductivity and metal detection.

KING: I -- I don't want to get into too much technical stuff.

DOLEMAN: Yes, I'm trying to keep it..

KING: What we know?

DOLEMAN: What we know is that during the process of that investigation, we recovered some things that will be analyzed. We have soil samples in which we'll look for evidence of unusual chemical composition using fairly standard geological techniques, under the assumption vacuumed or not, if there was debris, a lot of it was small, just like a broken glass and not all of it was recovered and some of it must be in the dirt out there if there is debris.

We also know that we found in one of the back hoe trenches that we excavated an unusual feature that had essentially the shape that you'd expect if there was a gouge and trench and the backhoe trench where that thing was found was right where there was supposed to be a gouge.

And so, essentially we're still in the analytical stage and the results of the analysis are going to be, I think I made available in a show presented by Sci-Fi coming up in October.

KING: Let me get a call here. Reykkavik, Iceland, hello.

CALLER: Hello.

KING: Hi.

CALLER: How have you, Larry?

KING: Fine. What's the question?

CALLER: Don't you think stories about the aliens being small people with large heads and large eyes and small mouths just came out of the experiments the military were doing after the war? They used children's bodies to investigate the effects of radiation on the human body.

KING: Any truth to that, Donald?

SCHMITT: The Air Force, in its continuing effort to provide alternative explanations and theories became -- reached a ridiculous level in 199, on the 50th anniversary, when it was suggested that these were anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies, albeit five years removed from 1947, with the suggestion that the witnesses were merely time compressing the decades within their memories. And until they are able to provide a single witness contrary to our own, as evidenced by Jessie Marcel's father and others that we have interviewed and have signed sworn affidavits -- until they can provide a witness at the debris field, at the impact site, at the base, on any of the outgoing and incoming flights involved, suggesting this was an alternative explanation, something prosaic, we will continue to go where the witnesses and the testimony lead us.

KING: Let me get a break. As we go to break, we remind you that the clips you are seeing are from Sci-Fi Channel's documentary "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD, and there you see the cover of the DVD.

And we'll be back with more calls. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. JOHN HAYNES U.S. AIR FORCE: They are talking about 1947. You're talking about dummies used in the '50s, almost a decade later.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm afraid that's a problem that we have with time compression. I don't know what they saw in '47 but I'm quite sure it probably was project Mogul. I think if you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was and there were lots of dummies dropped. There were 2,500 balloons launched during this 30-year period in New Mexico alone.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's the matter, James?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More of them are coming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Different ones. Like him. Many different races. Different species. They're coming!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you okay?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Julie Shuster, do a lot of people come to that museum?

SHUSTER: Yes, we have people from around the world coming. And last year we had over 205,000 visitors through our doors.

KING: What's that to your right?

SHUSTER: This is Harold our anthropomorphic, he is one of the explanations that was give that we mistook or the people of Roswell in 1947 mistook as an alien. The only problem was he wasn't used until 1952 to the late 1960s. So, we don't think he looks like an alien.

KING: Do most the people come, are they come as believers?

SHUSTER: I think a lot of them do. I can't say most. We have people that come with believe, don't believe, or never going to believe. But a lot of people come and want to have questions answered, if possible.

KING: Leslie Kean, what was found in Kecksburg?

KEAN: Well, Larry, that what is we want to find out, because we don't know.

KING: You mean, they won't show you?

KEAN: That is why we're doing the freedom of information act initiative. We have a law firm working with us and we got a history -- archives research firm. We have got a private investigator. We got a team of people trying to get the documentation that will tell us what came down. And that's why we are working on it. We don't know.

KING: Hamilton, New Jersey, hello.

CALLER: Hi. I have a question for Glenn.

KING: Go ahead.

CALLER: Did you see what the military put in the coffin that was (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

KING: Did you ever see anything in a coffin, Glenn?

DENNIS: No, I did not. I did not see it. They were all shipped out in what we call body bags and put in a hermetically sealed container and was flown directly to Wright-Patterson.

KING: Tampa, Florida. Hello.

CALLER: Yes, my question for your panel is, what effect, if any did the Cold War between United States and Russia have on disclosure of information on possible UFO crashes such as the one in Roswell in 1947.

KING: Don Schmitt has already referred to that. You think a great effect, right Don?

SCHMITT: Yes, of course it did. Almost a predecessor to our race to the moon, for example. And our development of atomic propulsion. The soviets won't detonate their first atomic bomb until August 1949 but our concern certainly was as to development of such technology and in the event of such a crash here at Roswell, again, certainly the hope that we were the only ones in possession. And we also believe that it may have also become a bit of a bargaining tool. The suggestion it was merely a weather balloon was something that even Premier Joseph Stalin didn't believe back in '47. And there are documents that suggest that he was very concerned that we had even upped our technology regarding the atomic bomb.

KING: Calgary, Ontario, Canada.

CALLER: Larry, a great fan.

KING: Thank you.

CALLER: It seems that the most frequent reports of UFO sightings are in the United States. You don't hear much about sightings in other countries throughout the world.

KING: Doctor Doleman, are there others?

DOLEMAN: Unfortunately, I'm totally not an expert in the UFO phenomenon. And I am an expert in archaeology, and finding physical evidence. But I'm afraid I can't answer that question.

KING: Donald are there others?

SCHMITT: Yes. If I might, in fact, at the center for UFO studies, for example, as they cataloged reports from all over the world, we have reports from almost as many countries that presently are in the United Nations.

KING: Why would you guess, Don, they land in Roswell, they don't land in Washington?

They land in Ennui, they don't land in Paris.

Why not a large area where we could all see them?

SCHMITT: That is always been the nature of the beast, so to speak. In other words, the phenomenon it is has been very late night, very rural, very isolated, yet there have been profound cases over military strategic air command facilities, in fact, even the buzzing of the White House in subsequent weeks in July of 1952 were formations of objects were tracked and aircraft scrambling from Andrews Air Force Base on these unknowns. So again, Roswell...

KING: Not just remote areas?

SCHMITT: New Mexico I think it had to do with the fact it was hot bed of military activity at the time. And indeed in dealing with something off the planet they were concerned with our military potential back in 1947.

KING: We'll be back with more moments and more phone calls on this ever-fascinating phenomenon.

Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the front of the draw it said "Operation Blue Book."

This might interest you in big (UNINTELLIGIBLE) photo. Roswell, '47.

One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth, and showed two others standing side by side, I assume they were the ones that lived.

BRYANT GUMBEL, HOST: According to Cox the file contained photos of the crashed spacecraft.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saucer, as they call it. Was not round as it's been depicted in most cases. It was more egg-shaped, front to rear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Julie, what does officialdom think of your museum?

SHUSTER: We've had no response, that I know, of from any official sources. We've opened up. We don't try to tell people one way or the other. So, nobody has questioned us, that we know of.

KING: What's that over there to your left?

SHUSTER: This is a prop. This alien was created as a prop for the movie Roswell in 1994 and he is one of our most-photographed, most enjoyed exhibits. People really like to check him out, and see what the aliens might have looked like.

KING: That's been the general description of those who reported to have seen them, that's the general description as to how they looked, right?

SHUSTER: Yes, sir, it was a composite of witness accounts.

KING: Thanks Julie.

Oakland, California, hello.

CALLER: Hi Larry. A quick comment. First, there has been UFO sightings of a major city such as Mexico City...

KING: They never land anywhere, though. They've been sighted everywhere, but they only land in Wallawallawalla.

CALLER: and possible sightings in Phoenix. My question is why are UFO investigations generally not taken seriously? Why are they laughed off as science fiction?

KING: Leslie.

KEAN: Well, she's right. There's a strong attitude of ridicule in the media and everywhere else. I think it's become a cultural phenomenon over many, many years. I think a lot of it is because people are not informed about the issue. If journalists and scientists and others were to study the data, to study what we do know, and to listen to some of the experts that have talked about the issue, I think they would change their minds. But it has become sort of inculcated into our culture. So I encourage people to do some research into this phenomena and, I think, they will discover it worthy of investigation and worthy of news coverage and there are scientists in this country and around the world deserve resource to solve this problem for us.

And we can have these wonderful witnesses coming forward. We can have documentaries made for years and years and years. We aren't going to solve the problem until we get our scientists on board. Get them the resources they need to find out for us, what these things are and to solve this problem once and for all. And I think that is what is needed. The Ridicule factor has to go.

KING: Hamburg, Germany. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Larry. You are just great. My question is, how could aliens visit the Earth if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?

KING: And not what?

CALLER: Speed of light?

KING: How co-- Donald, do you get that question?

SCHMITT: How could they travel the great distances and Dr. Heinich (ph) used the analogy of a deck of playing cards and the thickness of a card equally the distance from the Earth to the Moon being a single card. And the distance from Alpha Centauri 4.3 light years being 19 miles of playing cards. So it truly is, as far as astronomers and astrophysicists, for example -- that it is beyond acceptance within their field.

But we still have to accept the possibilities of parallel universes, interdimensional travel, worm holes, black holes and that type of thing and even teleportation and possibly time travel.

KING: Glenn, do you think we'll ever going to know the whole story?

DENNIS: Well, not at the rate it's going now. There's some sightings just recently in Australia and New Zealand and also I have a call the other day that people that had been in Egypt visiting the pyramids and they shut them down for three or four days and no tourists going out there on a count of the sightings.

KING: Go ahead, Glenn.

DENNIS: I don't know. I think more of the public understands this, the more they know about it, the better the whole world will be.

KING: Dr. Doleman, do you think we're going to get answers?

DOLEMAN: Well, I -- hard to say if we will or not, but I think that Leslie made a very important point, and that's one of the things that interested me in this project I did out there, that is, that all of the Roswell story, up until this point is largely based on eyewitness testimony and anecdotal evidence a few suggestive documents and things like that. And there is actually until this point, no one has bothered to go out and look for actual physical evidence. My part in this whole thing was to apply archaeological techniques to what is essentially an archaeological problem. Go to a site and see if there is evidence.

KING: And we want to thank the Sci-fi channel. That documentary is "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence" is now available on DVD.

We thank Glen Dennis for spending all this time with us. He worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell when all this happened.

Donald Schmitt, is the former co-director of the Jay Allen Heinich Center for UFO Studies.

Leslie Kean, is the investigative journalist looking into the incident in Kecksburg (ph), Pennsylvania, that's been called Pennsylvania's Roswell.

Dr. William Doleman, is the archaeologist and principal investigator for University of New Mexico Office of Contract Archaeology.

And Julie Shuster, is executive director of the UFO Museum.

I'll come back and tell you tomorrow right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Before we tell you about tomorrow, one of the funniest human beings on the planet and old friend, Buddy Hackett passed away yesterday. What a guy Buddy was. He appeared on this show once or twice, back in the early days, many times on my old radio show. God, he was funny. And he was creative and he was out of his mind. All he did was make you laugh. Dear buddy. We miss him already. Had breakfast with him a month ago. Now he's gone. Sleep well, Buddy.

Tomorrow night Charles Gibson of ABC's "Good Morning America" will be our special guest.

Dolly Parton is going to be aboard on Thursday night.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired July 1, 2003 - 21:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roswell, '47. One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Tonight: What really happened at Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago this week? Did the United States military cover up a UFO crash landing, complete with alien bodies? Do UFOs exist? Have they been here? Tonight we return to Roswell with those who were there. Walter Haut -- he was the information officer at Roswell Army Air Field. He wrote the now famous July 8, 1947, press release that said a flying disk had been recovered. Glenn Dennis -- he worked at a Roswell funeral home and says someone claiming to be the airfield's mortuary officer called to ask him about small caskets. Nancy Easley (ph) Johnston -- her father was in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. Jesse Marcel, Jr. -- his father was a Roswell intelligence officer. He says he saw debris samples his father brought home from the crash site.

And later, Don Schmitt, one of the world's leading UFO experts; Leslie Kean, a journalist investigating the incident known as "Pennsylvania's Roswell"; Dr. William Doleman, archeologist, who conducted tests on the Roswell site last year; and Julie Shuster (ph), Walter Haut's daughter and executive director of the International UFO Museum at Roswell. All next on LARRY KING LIVE.

By the way, we'll be seeing clips tonight and we refer you to the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence," that's now available on DVD, and we thank them for their help in this program tonight.

We start in Roswell, New Mexico with two guys who were there, Walter Haut, who was the United States Air Force public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field, and Glenn Dennis, who was working at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico.

What call did you get, Glenn?

GLENN DENNIS, FUNERAL WORKER CALLED BY MILITARY RE '47 CRASH: I received a call from the mortuary officer, informing...

KING: Go ahead. I'm hearing someone else talking. Go ahead. Go ahead, Glenn. Continue. All right, I think that's Walter talking. I think we're trying to talk to Walter at the same time we're talking to Glenn. One at a time. Glenn, what call did you get?

DENNIS: I received a call from the mortuary officer at the base, asking me how many infant hermetically sealed caskets we had, three- and-a-half to four feet, in stock. And I told him -- I said...

KING: What did you make of that?

DENNIS: ... we only had one. It's not military. But I said, I can call the Amarillo, Texas, coffin company by 3:00 this afternoon and have all you need by noon tomorrow (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I said, What's going on out there? And he said, That's not important. Then he calls me back later and he wants to know how embalming chemical would alter the tissues, the stomach contents, and what was our preparation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bodies laying out in the elements for days. I said, Sir, we have to -- the mortuary officer has to tell us what he wants and how he wants it and what procedure he wants us to follow. And he became a little bit upset. But anyway, that was the way that it all started off with me right there.

KING: All right, Walter, what supposedly happened at the air base, where you were the public information officer?

WALTER HAUT, FIRST TO MAKE 1947 CRASH INCIDENT PUBLIC: We came up with the fact that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and Colonel Blanchard (ph) told me to put it out on every medium I can put it out on, which I did as best I could. And I went home that evening, and THAT telephone and everything that they can use was running completely on -- I don't know what kind of value, but I think it ultimately quit at about 3:00 o'clock in the morning. It was...

KING: Now, did...

HAUT: ... a long -- go ahead.

KING: Were you ever asked to countermand that release? Were you ever asked to change what you were first asked to say?

HAUT: No, I was not told to change it. I put out the facts that we had in our possession, a flying saucer.

KING: Did you, Walter, ever see any of the wreckage?

HAUT: No, sir.

KING: What was said in the days subsequent? Was there a lot of talk about this? Did people at the airfield say they had seen any of these bodies or seen any of these creatures? Was it a wide amount of discussion at Roswell?

HAUT: No. I think you have to take in the idea that the people on the base were accustomed to keeping their mouths shut, if I may use that expression. The need just to talk about information doesn't fit (ph). People that were working on the base knew what was going on in the aircraft that they were working on. The persons like myself, the flymen, we were accustomed to taking off at certain times and turning around and keep on going.

KING: Well, we're going to -- before we continue questioning, we're going to show you a clip from the Sci-Fi Channel documentary, "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD. And we'll come back with Walter and Glenn. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Outside of Roswell, southwest of Highway 285, William Woody (ph) and his father reported seeing a fiery object descending toward earth.

KEVIN D. RANDLE, PH.D., AUTHOR, "OPERATION ROSWELL": What's interesting about the Woody aspect of it is that he and his father the next day, or a day or two later, tried to go out to see if they could find where the thing fell and ran into the military cordon. So we've got an interesting little corroboration there that the military was interested in it, and they were turned back by the cordons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I know that Walter is a little under the weather, so I'll just have a question or two left for you, Walter, and let you get out and get some help. Did not the next day General Roger Ramey (ph) in Fort Worth say that the object was a weather balloon?

HAUT: Yes. That's what came out. The general just put in a -- it's -- You're wrong when you talk about it. It's just a weather balloon, and forget it. That's about...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: The key question for you, Walter, is, what do you believe?

HAUT: Well, I believe, personally, that we had in our possession a flying saucer, and that's the whole sum -- the story, as far as I was concerned.

KING: So you believe aliens crashed and that -- and that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, at the air base. Walter, I hope you feel better. I thank you for spending some time with us.

Glenn Dennis will remain. Other guests will join us. Be well, Walter.

We'll return with more on the incredible events of 56 years ago at Roswell, New Mexico, still one of the most talked-about events ever. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The strange wreckage that Brazel (ph) discovered spanned an area 300 yards wide by a mile long. That parcel of land, known to investigators as the debris field, is where some believe an extraterrestrial craft blew apart and fell to earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico. Joining us from Colorado Springs is Nancy Easley Johnston, the daughter of Edwin Easley (ph), the Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. And in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel, who was an intelligence officer at Roswell. He says he saw debris samples that his father brought home.

Glenn, back to you. What was the follow-up? What was the eventual result? Did they ever order any of these caskets? Glenn?

DENNIS: Yes?

KING: Did they order -- did the Army Air Force ever order anything from the funeral home?

DENNIS: No, sir, they did not. They did not order anything.

KING: How do you know the Air Force was calling you?

DENNIS: Well, because I knew the mortuary officer out there very well. We were close friends.

KING: Oh.

DENNIS: And I knew all the people out there. We worked at the hospital. We had the only ambulance business, and we were involved quite a bit out at the base. Also, we had a military contract. So I knew them all.

KING: Do you agree with Walter? Do you think that a -- that a foreign object landed there with aliens at Roswell 56 years ago?

HAUT: Well, I agree with him. One reason I agree with him, because all the ranchers and farmers knew what weather balloons were. And every time they found one, there's a little instrument on the end. And if they turned that in, they got 25 bucks. When this happened, they had no idea what it was. They filled their pick-ups full of metal -- I mean, full of the debris, brought it in to the Roswell Army Air Field. And that's where all the investigation started, right there.

KING: All right, Nancy, your father was Army Air Corps officer in charge of security and clean-up. What did he -- how old were you at the time?

NANCY JOHNSTON, DAD HEADED ROSWELL CRASH SITE SECURITY: I was a year-and-a-half old, so I remember very little!

(LAUGHTER)

KING: What did he tell you later on? JOHNSTON: My father was reluctant to ever talk about this incident. Once my sister and I discovered that an incident had occurred that he had been part of, when we asked him about it, he always told us that he had promised President Truman that he would not discuss it. And he stuck with that up until the end -- until almost the very end.

KING: Doesn't by the fact that he wouldn't say anything tell you that something happened?

JOHNSTON: I'm sure something happened. I am not privy to the knowledge of what exactly happened, but I'm sure something happened.

KING: And Jesse Marcel, Jr., your father was an intelligence officer. You said you saw debris samples that he brought home? What did you see?

DR. JESSE MARCEL, JR., DAD SHOWED HIM CRASH SITE DEBRIS: Yes, Larry. You know, my dad was the -- one of the intelligence officers for the 509th Bomb Group. And as such, it was his job to investigate unusual events like what happened out there. And he was called out one night to the ranch where this thing had landed, picked up some of the debris. He and one of the CIC (ph) agents picked up some of the debris and loaded it in the back of our 1942 Buick. And since our house was on the way to the air base, my dad just swung by the house to show my mother and myself what they had found out there because he realized this was something very, very unusual, something unique, as a matter of fact, because he didn't think we would ever see anything like this again, which, of course, I have not.

And he drove by the house, put it on kitchen floor, woke my mother and myself us up so we could look at this. And we got out in the kitchen and looked -- I looked at the debris that was on the floor, and there was just a lot of metal parts, metallic, like, foil- like debris, some I-beam material and some black plastic material. And the first thing he wanted us to do was to look for electronic components, such as vacuum tubes, resistors or condensers because I think he said something like this is part of a flying saucer. And being a young kid at the time, I didn't know what a flying saucer was, but I sure realized later.

But I examined some of the debris, some of the foil. I didn't -- picked it up, looked at it. Didn't try to bend or tear it or stress it in any way. But I found something very unusual. There were some I-beams that were about a foot, a foot-and-a-half long. And along the inner surface of the I-beams, you could see some sort of writing. And there was kind of a purple metallic hue, as you could see very well if you held this up to the light. And I thought at first this was like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but later thought it was not hieroglyphics at all but more like geometric symbols.

KING: I want to pick up there in a minute, but I want to -- hold on one second, Jesse. I want to toss to film clip of your father talking a little about this. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JESSE MARCEL, SR., 509TH BOMB GROUP: One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all air activities, that it was not a weather balloon nor an aircraft nor a missile. It was something else, of which -- we didn't know what it was. There were just fragments strewn all over the area. So we proceeded to pick up the parts. A lot of it had a lot of little numbers with symbols that -- to me, I call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them. They could not be read. They were just like symbols of something that meant something. These little numbers could not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn that, would not burn. See, that stuff weighs nothing. It's not any thicker than tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Jesse, subsequently, did your father come home and tell you and your mother to forget everything?

MARCEL: Well, he sure did. As I understood, he flew the material to Fort Worth to General Roger Ramey, who was 8th Air Force commander, for his information. And when my dad got back the next day or the day after, he sat my mother and myself down and told us under no uncertain terms were we to ever discuss this issue again. Of course, here I'm talking about, but -- but that was very definitely one of the commands that he gave us, is not to talk about it, not with your friends, not with anybody, not even family members.

KING: So the obvious, Jesse, is what do you believe?

MARCEL: Well, I think it's something very extraordinary. I don't know what it was. But since that time, I -- and thinking more about this, I can't help but believe that it was something that came from another civilization, much like a space probe that we're sending to other planets right now and -- because the material was unique, like I say. And I do know it was not a weather balloon or even a mogul (ph) balloon, like the Air Force later said, because the material was totally different.

KING: Nancy, what do you -- I know your father said, Say nothing, and he wouldn't tell you what, and Truman and all that. What do you believe?

JOHNSTON: I believe that something obviously happened out there in the countryside close to Roswell that the government has tried very hard all these years to keep us from understanding and knowing about. Since I was not a witness, I have no personal knowledge of what it was, but it had to have been something very big at that time that the government wanted covered up.

KING: Now, Glenn, you still live -- you live in Roswell. Do you believe there's...

DENNIS: That's true...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Do you believe there's still stuff there? DENNIS: Well, they go out every year, every year after all of the snows and the winter. These government people go out with Geiger counters and everything else, and they have this all marked off up there. And I don't know if they found anything else or not because they do not consult us anymore at all. But I do know the ranchers and I know people up there because our mortuary has been involved up there with most of it -- I mean, with the people there, and very seldom will we ever talk about it. Once in a while, we'll sit down and mention something, but not very often.

KING: Jesse, you think the government set your father up to be kind of a fall guy here?

MARCEL: Well, he was a good soldier. He was just following orders. And I'm sure that he was told to bring the message home to the family that -- that not to talk about it because, apparently, somebody found out that we actually saw the material. And you know, years later, I asked him about the possibility of something being still out there, and he said, No, no, no. They vacuumed that place up, period.

KING: Now, you stay with us, Jesse. Nancy, thanks very much for being with us. We'll hold Glenn, and we'll be -- thank you, Nancy. We appreciate your input. We'll come back with more. We'll meet our full panel later. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 1947, Americans found their skies filled with all sorts of strange flying objects.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The UFO phenomenon really took off, actually, in June of 1947 in the state of Washington when a pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold saw many objects going in formation at a very, very high speed by Mount Rainier in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arnold said that nine silvery objects he'd seen looked like saucers skipping over a pond. The next day, his story was front-page news, and a new term entered the American lexicon: flying saucer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP - JUNE, 1997)

COL. JOHN HAYNES, U.S. AIR FORCE: Over that period of time, dummies were dropped all around there, and I think it's logical to assume that the people there saw Air Force ambulances come out, they saw gurneys come out, they saw body bags come out because the dummies were put into the body bags to protect them. They saw people in pith helmet, they saw people in shorts out there brushing the bushes, looking for the remnants of the balloons. And when you put all that stuff together and spin it, you find that it fits perfectly with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Remaining with us is Glenn Dennis, who worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico, 56 year ago. Staying with us in Helena, Montana, is Dr. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the son of Major Jesse Marcel. Joining us now from Roswell is Donald Schmitt. Donald Schmitt is the former co-director of J. Alan (ph) Hynek Center for UFO Studies. He's the author of dozens of articles about UFOs, two best- selling books about Roswell. In San Francisco is Leslie Kean. Leslie's an investigative journalist, director of investigation of the Coalition for Freedom of Information. She's looking into connections of the 1965 incident in Kecksburg (ph), Pennsylvania's. It's been called "Pennsylvania's Roswell." She's not an expert on Roswell. We'll go to her in a little while. Dr. William Doleman is an archaeologist, principal investigator for the University of New Mexico's School of Contract Archaeology. And he conducted a Sci-Fi Channel-sponsored archaeological dig at the purported UFO crash site in Roswell in September of 2002.

Donald, what is your read on all of this?

DONALD SCHMITT, FORMER CO-DIR. HYNEK CTR. FOR UFO STUDIES: Well, I think what has impressed me most of all, especially within the recent years, pertaining to the investigation, as even Nancy Strickland (ph) was describing, the level of extreme pressure for these people who were involved to retain their silence, to keep this event, keep the experience with them for as long as they did, withholding the information even from their loved ones, their wives, their children. And as you all know that a deathbed testimony is admissible in a court of law as physical evidence, and sadly, that's something that we are concentrating on right now. And to date, not a single one of these people on their deathbeds are describing any type of weather balloon, rocket, aircraft, anything conventional. Invariably, they all describe the bodies recovered, as well. And I'm not talking about anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies.

KING: Dr. Doleman, what do you believe?

WILLIAM DOLEMAN, PH.D., LED 2002 ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG: I believe that, clearly, something happened or it wouldn't have made the news. At the same time, I kind of maintain a position in which I'm a scientific investigator looking for physical evidence, and I'm not in the business of evaluating the testimony of various people. Instead, I'm engaged in a project that, as far as I know, represents the first intensive effort at what -- at least -- to find some kind of physical evidence of whatever happened back there in 1947. And so in terms of what I believe, it's really kind of irrelevant because what I believe is that scientific investigation is the best way to go about looking for that physical evidence.

KING: Jesse, why do you believe, if it occurred, the Army wanted to cover it up? What's the big deal? Why not tell us there is life somewhere else?

MARCEL: I wish I knew the answer to that question because, for some reason, they are not ready for the public to know what's really out there, in spite of the fact that we're sending probes ourselves to other planets. And obviously, there are civilizations out there that are far advanced of us and can send probes here. So I really don't know the answer to the questions, why they're trying to keep it a secret.

KING: Leslie, what happened at Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965?

LESLIE KEAN, JOURNALIST INVESTIGATING "PA'S ROSWELL": Well, something came down in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965. An object was seen in the sky. There was a meteorite that night, and it went through a number of different states. Citizens of the community saw -- some of them saw it actually make a few turns. It came in fairly slowly and landed in the woods near Kecksburg. A number of witnesses actually saw the object on the ground. Others saw a very extensive military presence come into the region. They cordoned off the area. They kept people away and eventually carted away something on the back of a flatbed truck.

This is what the people of the area tell us. The Air Force has told us that nothing came down that night. So we have a contradiction here, and I'm interested in trying to access information that will solve that mystery.

KING: What do you believe?

KEAN: I don't know what it was. There's no way to know. We know that something came down. It could have been a Russian probe. We don't know what it was, and I'm not in a position to formulate an opinion. I just want -- I believe that the people have the right to the information, the people of Pennsylvania, in particular, who have really suffered a lot by having that information denied to them. And I just think people have a right to know. It was, you know, 1965. Why not tell people what happened there?

KING: We're going to take a break. Jesse Marcel, thanks very much for joining us.

When we come back, our panel will remain, and we'll also meet Julie Schuster, the executive director of the International UFO Museum. We'll also be including your phone calls. We're discussing Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago.

Charles Gibson of "Good Morning America" is tomorrow night's special guest. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so Ramey told the press that all this stuff was, was simply a weather balloon. And that was what most of the press published the next day.

SCHMITT: They never saw the real material. The real material went on to Washington at that time. So Marcel is ordered to pose with the substituted radar reflector balloon. So the first press release, there was a flying saucer, and six hours later, We're sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It's just a weather balloon. The question is, which press release is the true story?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Major Marcel (ph) and Captain Sheridan Cavet (ph) traveled to the Foster Ranch and spent a day gathering the strange wreckage. Marcel was so intrigued by the debris that on his way back to the base, he stopped by his home to show his family what he'd found.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My dad came into my room, very excited and he wanted to show us some material that he'd found. I think he -- the inclination or the intimation there was this was part of a flying saucer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Discussing the events in Roswell, New Mexico.

Joining us now is Julie Shuster. She is the executive director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. The earlier guest, Walter Haut, is her father.

What is the -- what did we see at the museum, Julie?

JULIE SHUSTER, EXEC. DIR., INTL. UFO MUSEUM AT ROSWELL: We have a lot of things to offer and one of the things that we try to do is show what Roswell looked like in 1947, give our visitors a glimpse of what Roswell looked like and one of the things we do is our radio display with the teletype and the audio control that show what the radio station may have looked like where Mac Brazel was interviewed.

KING: Do you show anything resembling what might have been captured there?

SHUSTER: We have a lot of artists' renditions of what the saucers may have looked like. We do have a few other displays that give some interpretations.

KING: We know what your father thinks. What do you think?

SHUSTER: Now if I said I agreed with my father, because he's sitting here -- no -- I believe that something did happen. These were people with incredible integrity and very conservative and if they said something happened, something happened.

KING: Donald Schmitt, why would the government -- this has been asked over the years, every time we hear about UFOs, what are they hiding? For what purpose?

SCHMITT: Well, in just looking at the history, specifically of New Mexico in 1947, I'm amazed when I especially lecture on the college circuit when you ask where was first atomic bomb detonated and invariably most people say Japan, whereas anybody here in New Mexico, historically knows it happened right here, just about 150 miles west of Roswell.

Roswell was the hot bed of all military research and testing at that time, the captured V-2 rockets and if we go by the Air Force's Project Blue Book records, which would suggest that there were more UFO sightings here in 1947 than anywhere else, whereas there were also more Soviet spies here...

KING: But the question is, why would they keep the information from the public, assuming it's all true?

SCHMITT: Well, that would be part of it, the fact that it immediately became a concern of the high ranking officials at the Pentagon that if this was of anything of a foreign design and it was some new intelligence, something that could potentially be reverse engineered, replicated, that it would become an immediate race with the Soviets, something that we possessed and hopefully they did not.

KING: And that wouldn't be the thinking now. So we assume that this information is passed along, so why doesn't -- Rumsfeld release it?

SCHMITT: Well, as you have had former President Carter and former President Clinton, the question could be posed to either one of them, whereas they themselves tried to gain access to information, actually tried to release information specifically on UFOs and specifically on Roswell and yet they failed.

It is our position -- my partner Thomas Carey and I -- that it is still a cover up of ignorance, that they have physical proof, but they still don't have the answers as to from where, from why and from whom.

KING: Glenn, why do you think they are not releasing it?

DENNIS: Well, from what I've been told, and being interviewed, the problem is that whoever has this energy could control the whole world and if we don't have the elements on our planet or anything else to reproduce these, then it could be a problem. I've heard this from three or four different sources and maybe that's true. I don't know. If you remember, the Orson Welles deal.

KING: "War of the Worlds."

DENNIS: Yes.

KING: Yes.

DENNIS: And they didn't know if that would happen in New Mexico or around the world, or anything else if we were being invaded by aliens.

KING: Before we go to calls, Dr. Doleman, what do we know, know. What can you definitively scientifically say?

DOLEMAN: Well, we were funded by the Sci-Fi Channel back in September of last year to conduct an archaeological test excavation at the putative Roswell impact site, which is one of two or three sites. We were led to that location by Don Schmitt and what we did was implement some fairly standard archaeology test excavations methods in a staged research project to look for evidence of the sort that had been originally reported by the eyewitnesses and that primarily includes debris, which was ostensibly all cleaned up, and a gouge or furrow mark in the ground that was made by something that hit the ground and then skipped back up in the air and came back down in another locations. So the methods that we used to look for that involved geophysical prospection using electromagnetic conductivity and metal detection.

KING: I -- I don't want to get into too much technical stuff.

DOLEMAN: Yes, I'm trying to keep it..

KING: What we know?

DOLEMAN: What we know is that during the process of that investigation, we recovered some things that will be analyzed. We have soil samples in which we'll look for evidence of unusual chemical composition using fairly standard geological techniques, under the assumption vacuumed or not, if there was debris, a lot of it was small, just like a broken glass and not all of it was recovered and some of it must be in the dirt out there if there is debris.

We also know that we found in one of the back hoe trenches that we excavated an unusual feature that had essentially the shape that you'd expect if there was a gouge and trench and the backhoe trench where that thing was found was right where there was supposed to be a gouge.

And so, essentially we're still in the analytical stage and the results of the analysis are going to be, I think I made available in a show presented by Sci-Fi coming up in October.

KING: Let me get a call here. Reykkavik, Iceland, hello.

CALLER: Hello.

KING: Hi.

CALLER: How have you, Larry?

KING: Fine. What's the question?

CALLER: Don't you think stories about the aliens being small people with large heads and large eyes and small mouths just came out of the experiments the military were doing after the war? They used children's bodies to investigate the effects of radiation on the human body.

KING: Any truth to that, Donald?

SCHMITT: The Air Force, in its continuing effort to provide alternative explanations and theories became -- reached a ridiculous level in 199, on the 50th anniversary, when it was suggested that these were anthropomorphic wooden crash dummies, albeit five years removed from 1947, with the suggestion that the witnesses were merely time compressing the decades within their memories. And until they are able to provide a single witness contrary to our own, as evidenced by Jessie Marcel's father and others that we have interviewed and have signed sworn affidavits -- until they can provide a witness at the debris field, at the impact site, at the base, on any of the outgoing and incoming flights involved, suggesting this was an alternative explanation, something prosaic, we will continue to go where the witnesses and the testimony lead us.

KING: Let me get a break. As we go to break, we remind you that the clips you are seeing are from Sci-Fi Channel's documentary "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence." It's now available on DVD, and there you see the cover of the DVD.

And we'll be back with more calls. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. JOHN HAYNES U.S. AIR FORCE: They are talking about 1947. You're talking about dummies used in the '50s, almost a decade later.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm afraid that's a problem that we have with time compression. I don't know what they saw in '47 but I'm quite sure it probably was project Mogul. I think if you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was and there were lots of dummies dropped. There were 2,500 balloons launched during this 30-year period in New Mexico alone.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's the matter, James?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More of them are coming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Different ones. Like him. Many different races. Different species. They're coming!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you okay?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Julie Shuster, do a lot of people come to that museum?

SHUSTER: Yes, we have people from around the world coming. And last year we had over 205,000 visitors through our doors.

KING: What's that to your right?

SHUSTER: This is Harold our anthropomorphic, he is one of the explanations that was give that we mistook or the people of Roswell in 1947 mistook as an alien. The only problem was he wasn't used until 1952 to the late 1960s. So, we don't think he looks like an alien.

KING: Do most the people come, are they come as believers?

SHUSTER: I think a lot of them do. I can't say most. We have people that come with believe, don't believe, or never going to believe. But a lot of people come and want to have questions answered, if possible.

KING: Leslie Kean, what was found in Kecksburg?

KEAN: Well, Larry, that what is we want to find out, because we don't know.

KING: You mean, they won't show you?

KEAN: That is why we're doing the freedom of information act initiative. We have a law firm working with us and we got a history -- archives research firm. We have got a private investigator. We got a team of people trying to get the documentation that will tell us what came down. And that's why we are working on it. We don't know.

KING: Hamilton, New Jersey, hello.

CALLER: Hi. I have a question for Glenn.

KING: Go ahead.

CALLER: Did you see what the military put in the coffin that was (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

KING: Did you ever see anything in a coffin, Glenn?

DENNIS: No, I did not. I did not see it. They were all shipped out in what we call body bags and put in a hermetically sealed container and was flown directly to Wright-Patterson.

KING: Tampa, Florida. Hello.

CALLER: Yes, my question for your panel is, what effect, if any did the Cold War between United States and Russia have on disclosure of information on possible UFO crashes such as the one in Roswell in 1947.

KING: Don Schmitt has already referred to that. You think a great effect, right Don?

SCHMITT: Yes, of course it did. Almost a predecessor to our race to the moon, for example. And our development of atomic propulsion. The soviets won't detonate their first atomic bomb until August 1949 but our concern certainly was as to development of such technology and in the event of such a crash here at Roswell, again, certainly the hope that we were the only ones in possession. And we also believe that it may have also become a bit of a bargaining tool. The suggestion it was merely a weather balloon was something that even Premier Joseph Stalin didn't believe back in '47. And there are documents that suggest that he was very concerned that we had even upped our technology regarding the atomic bomb.

KING: Calgary, Ontario, Canada.

CALLER: Larry, a great fan.

KING: Thank you.

CALLER: It seems that the most frequent reports of UFO sightings are in the United States. You don't hear much about sightings in other countries throughout the world.

KING: Doctor Doleman, are there others?

DOLEMAN: Unfortunately, I'm totally not an expert in the UFO phenomenon. And I am an expert in archaeology, and finding physical evidence. But I'm afraid I can't answer that question.

KING: Donald are there others?

SCHMITT: Yes. If I might, in fact, at the center for UFO studies, for example, as they cataloged reports from all over the world, we have reports from almost as many countries that presently are in the United Nations.

KING: Why would you guess, Don, they land in Roswell, they don't land in Washington?

They land in Ennui, they don't land in Paris.

Why not a large area where we could all see them?

SCHMITT: That is always been the nature of the beast, so to speak. In other words, the phenomenon it is has been very late night, very rural, very isolated, yet there have been profound cases over military strategic air command facilities, in fact, even the buzzing of the White House in subsequent weeks in July of 1952 were formations of objects were tracked and aircraft scrambling from Andrews Air Force Base on these unknowns. So again, Roswell...

KING: Not just remote areas?

SCHMITT: New Mexico I think it had to do with the fact it was hot bed of military activity at the time. And indeed in dealing with something off the planet they were concerned with our military potential back in 1947.

KING: We'll be back with more moments and more phone calls on this ever-fascinating phenomenon.

Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the front of the draw it said "Operation Blue Book."

This might interest you in big (UNINTELLIGIBLE) photo. Roswell, '47.

One picture showed three dead aliens laying side by side, apparently on some kind of a canvas or cloth, and showed two others standing side by side, I assume they were the ones that lived.

BRYANT GUMBEL, HOST: According to Cox the file contained photos of the crashed spacecraft.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saucer, as they call it. Was not round as it's been depicted in most cases. It was more egg-shaped, front to rear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Julie, what does officialdom think of your museum?

SHUSTER: We've had no response, that I know, of from any official sources. We've opened up. We don't try to tell people one way or the other. So, nobody has questioned us, that we know of.

KING: What's that over there to your left?

SHUSTER: This is a prop. This alien was created as a prop for the movie Roswell in 1994 and he is one of our most-photographed, most enjoyed exhibits. People really like to check him out, and see what the aliens might have looked like.

KING: That's been the general description of those who reported to have seen them, that's the general description as to how they looked, right?

SHUSTER: Yes, sir, it was a composite of witness accounts.

KING: Thanks Julie.

Oakland, California, hello.

CALLER: Hi Larry. A quick comment. First, there has been UFO sightings of a major city such as Mexico City...

KING: They never land anywhere, though. They've been sighted everywhere, but they only land in Wallawallawalla.

CALLER: and possible sightings in Phoenix. My question is why are UFO investigations generally not taken seriously? Why are they laughed off as science fiction?

KING: Leslie.

KEAN: Well, she's right. There's a strong attitude of ridicule in the media and everywhere else. I think it's become a cultural phenomenon over many, many years. I think a lot of it is because people are not informed about the issue. If journalists and scientists and others were to study the data, to study what we do know, and to listen to some of the experts that have talked about the issue, I think they would change their minds. But it has become sort of inculcated into our culture. So I encourage people to do some research into this phenomena and, I think, they will discover it worthy of investigation and worthy of news coverage and there are scientists in this country and around the world deserve resource to solve this problem for us.

And we can have these wonderful witnesses coming forward. We can have documentaries made for years and years and years. We aren't going to solve the problem until we get our scientists on board. Get them the resources they need to find out for us, what these things are and to solve this problem once and for all. And I think that is what is needed. The Ridicule factor has to go.

KING: Hamburg, Germany. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Larry. You are just great. My question is, how could aliens visit the Earth if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?

KING: And not what?

CALLER: Speed of light?

KING: How co-- Donald, do you get that question?

SCHMITT: How could they travel the great distances and Dr. Heinich (ph) used the analogy of a deck of playing cards and the thickness of a card equally the distance from the Earth to the Moon being a single card. And the distance from Alpha Centauri 4.3 light years being 19 miles of playing cards. So it truly is, as far as astronomers and astrophysicists, for example -- that it is beyond acceptance within their field.

But we still have to accept the possibilities of parallel universes, interdimensional travel, worm holes, black holes and that type of thing and even teleportation and possibly time travel.

KING: Glenn, do you think we'll ever going to know the whole story?

DENNIS: Well, not at the rate it's going now. There's some sightings just recently in Australia and New Zealand and also I have a call the other day that people that had been in Egypt visiting the pyramids and they shut them down for three or four days and no tourists going out there on a count of the sightings.

KING: Go ahead, Glenn.

DENNIS: I don't know. I think more of the public understands this, the more they know about it, the better the whole world will be.

KING: Dr. Doleman, do you think we're going to get answers?

DOLEMAN: Well, I -- hard to say if we will or not, but I think that Leslie made a very important point, and that's one of the things that interested me in this project I did out there, that is, that all of the Roswell story, up until this point is largely based on eyewitness testimony and anecdotal evidence a few suggestive documents and things like that. And there is actually until this point, no one has bothered to go out and look for actual physical evidence. My part in this whole thing was to apply archaeological techniques to what is essentially an archaeological problem. Go to a site and see if there is evidence.

KING: And we want to thank the Sci-fi channel. That documentary is "The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence" is now available on DVD.

We thank Glen Dennis for spending all this time with us. He worked at the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell when all this happened.

Donald Schmitt, is the former co-director of the Jay Allen Heinich Center for UFO Studies.

Leslie Kean, is the investigative journalist looking into the incident in Kecksburg (ph), Pennsylvania, that's been called Pennsylvania's Roswell.

Dr. William Doleman, is the archaeologist and principal investigator for University of New Mexico Office of Contract Archaeology.

And Julie Shuster, is executive director of the UFO Museum.

I'll come back and tell you tomorrow right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Before we tell you about tomorrow, one of the funniest human beings on the planet and old friend, Buddy Hackett passed away yesterday. What a guy Buddy was. He appeared on this show once or twice, back in the early days, many times on my old radio show. God, he was funny. And he was creative and he was out of his mind. All he did was make you laugh. Dear buddy. We miss him already. Had breakfast with him a month ago. Now he's gone. Sleep well, Buddy.

Tomorrow night Charles Gibson of ABC's "Good Morning America" will be our special guest.

Dolly Parton is going to be aboard on Thursday night.

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