In July 1947, Major Jesse Marcel Sr. of the 509th Bombardment Group at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) was assigned to see the crash reported outside Roswell in New Mexico. In his journal made public for the first time, Marcel said that he found "indestructible debris that was not made by human hands" and that alien writings were etched on some of the pieces from the debris.
Roswell debris the remnants of an alien spaceship?
Marcel, who died in 1986, issued a statement that was run on the front page of the Roswell Daily Record under a headline that read "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell."
"The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into the possession of a Flying Saucer," read the article published July 8, 1947.
The crash was first reported to the authorities by a rancher named W.W. Brazel, who was driving with his son several miles northwest of Roswell when they encountered what Brazel described as "a large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil and rather tough paper and sticks."
But shortly after the discovery made headlines, the now-defunct Department of War at Washington D.C. released a statement saying that the debris was just the remnants of a weather balloon. The Air Force stated that the weather balloon was part of an airborne system designed to search the atmosphere for weak signals from nuclear-test blasts. It was developed as part of the military's Project Mogul, which was conducted in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The only known evidence left of the wreckage is Marcel's journal, which got passed down to his grandchildren Jesse Marcel III and John Marcel. "He had examined the debris in the field and determined it was not made by human hands," Jesse told Daily Mail. He added that it was "preposterous" for Marcel not to recognize a weather balloon knowing that he completed training on how to control one. (Related: Has the second "alien megastructure" been found?.)
The debris included metal and plastic pieces, fiber optics and beams etched with what Marcel believed was "alien writing." He suspected that the fiber optics were "from the computers on the ship," said John.
Marcel lit up one of the metal pieces using a lighter to melt or warm it but the material did neither, his grandchildren said. He brought the debris to the RAAF base where he and his colleagues attempted to determine what material the pieces were made of. They tried to drill a hole through one of the metal pieces but the blades broke on impact. The material, according to Marcel, was light but strong.
Marcel came home with the debris and the brothers' father shone a light on the beams and saw a purple light inside with a symbol of a seal balancing a ball on its nose. "My grandfather said, 'You might be the first person on Earth to look at alien writing,'" Jesse said.
Former CIA operative speaks out
The Air Force disputed Marcel's claims and asserted that the Roswell rubble were really mundane objects that got reported as exotic materials by later accounts. But Marcel never retracted or changed any details of what he saw that day despite being ordered to deny his findings, according to his grandchildren.
This "says a lot," according to Jesse, because as a high-ranking intelligence officer at Roswell and the former head of intelligence for the World War II bombing program, Marcel knew how to protect secrets and was trusted enough to be assigned to see the wreckage.
"In essence, he was at the heart of the story and heart of the conspiracy or cover-up," Jesse noted. (Related: Aliens struck a deal with the US to keep their existence secret, says ex-Israeli space chief.)
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Ben Smith agrees with the brothers and vouched for Marcel's character, calling him "an intelligent, capable officer who knew the value and importance of secrets" and "did his duty to toe the publicity line." Yet Marcel made statements that were contrary to that and which he held "onto for so long" without making changes to his account, according to Smith.
"They did not grow but remained the same. It was the same simple story," said Smith, who also saw the journal as part of a three-part series he's hosting, "Roswell: The First Witness," an investigation of the 1947 Roswell incident set to air Dec. 12 on the History Channel.
"I am not convinced that it is a balloon. But I am still waiting to complete my decision," said Smith. "There are breaks in the journal that are not clear, but it could be a secret code."
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