Draws on interviews with more than one hundred witnesses to reveal the story of the crash of a UFO in New Mexico in 1947 and the subsequent government conspiracy to conceal the truth
Stanton T. Friedman was a nuclear physicist and professional ufologist who resided in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He was the original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident. He worked on research and development projects for several large companies.
I have wanted to read Stanton Friedman for years. Some regard him as the patriarch of UFOlogy. I almost met him once. I'd signed up for a "paranormal convention" at LA Convention Center, but it cancelled months before it ran. I was to see his famous presentation "Flying Saucers are real!"
The book itself contains much information. It is debatable if each piece can be recognized as a fact, it really depends on one's own personality. What I believe is remarkably haunting is the presence and cohesiveness of many of them. One could say it is unlikely for an event such as a UFO crash to occur, but after reading the book, I can say that it is unlikely for so much to occur surrounding an event for that event to not happened in some like fashion.
One annoying aspect of the book is that it keeps repeating the time line over and over. Sometimes stating the same information more than once. The authors will use this method to elaborate on different aspects of the incidents. I can not say I could come up with a better way, but the frequency in which it happens seems unnecessary.
One can not attempt to understand what Roswell was all about without reading this book.
What do I believe? I believe in an open mind. I believe skepticism is useful but can also be stifling. I believe that by looking at the details and trying to fit them together as one would a puzzle, you can find interesting things you would not normally be able to.
At the very least, the subject of UFO's is one of many puzzle pieces. Who knows what it may amount to when assembled properly?
If you're looking for the best book on the Roswell cover-up, this is it. The Roswell story is complicated, complex, circuitous, tangled, and all together maddening; but Don Berliner manages to tell the story in a compelling narrative that builds on recently uncovered documents and first hand accounts. I loved this book and I, um, well, I've read a lot of UFO books.
The mythos of Roswell has been hashed over for the last 30 years now. Stan is one of the most respected UFO authors in America. His book is a straight forward, no nonsense look at the alleged Crash, the alleged cover up and what it might mean to the human race.
I sometimes find the question of skeptics tiresome as they refuse to believe anything that fogs up their world view.
I don't know what happened but here is some thoughts.
Historically events do not re-occur on a daily basis. It is possible that an event happened, was discovered, was covered up and we moved on. IT does not mean that you can produce a flying saucer on demand.
Is it an ET event. I don't know. It could be dimensional, it could be a robotic probe, it could be a misinterpretation of the what occurred. What the sure hell it wasn't was a weather balloon. I guess we can figure that the government sometimes isn't 100% transparent or truthful. Read it for your self and then decide. No Tin Foil Hats need apply
Loved it. Absolutely fascinating. Very good details, quite unbiased I thought, and interesting conclusions. Kept my attention riveted, a good continuance of my Roswell trip!
A STUDY OF THE CORONA (ROSWELL) ‘CRASH,’ MJ-12, AND MORE
Stanton Terry Friedman (1934–2019) was a nuclear physicist for 14 years, before becoming a professional ufologist in 1970. Don Berliner is an independent journalist and author.
The Preface to this 1992 book states, “Reduced to its simplest terms, this is a book to answer one of the most common questions about UFOs: if they are real, why hasn’t one ever crashed? The underlying implication is that since UFOs presumably don’t crash, they must not be real… The lack of solid evidence that even one had crashed had bothered serious students of the subject for decades… And without something more than an untraceable rumor of a crash, it was difficult to make much of a case for UFO reality, let alone alien origin.
“The need for an improved, updated, more understandable and more readable book to follow the 1980 ‘Roswell Incident’ by Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz had been on the mind of lecturer/researcher Stanton Friedman for many years. Having done much of the investigating for that book, he continued to dig into the crash near Corona, New Mexico. (Nothing crashed at Roswell, despite the titles of books; it was just the largest city within seventy-five miles of the crash site.) Stan spent years tracking down witnesses and widows of witnesses and neighbors and co-workers and anyone else who might be able to add even a tiny scrap to the slowly jelling story… literary agent John White... brought [Friedman and Berliner] together and suggested they collaborate, with Friedman concentrating on the investigation and Berliner on the writing… This book is certainly not the end. It is merely the most recent step in the complex, frustrating, fascinating search for witnesses and evidence of one of the most amazing events in world history. The search will continue until the facts have been made public.”
The Introduction notes that shortly after the initial reporting of a ‘Flying Saucer’ in 1947, “the story… was canceled and replaced by another, quite different one: The wonderful ‘flying disc’ was nothing more than the radar reflector from a wandering weather balloon that had somehow been misidentified by the first people to see it…. The press … unanimously concluded that it had all been a mistake, that a balloon had been misidentified as a flying disc.” (Pg. xiv-xv) But they add, “No one thought to question why something so commonplace as a weather balloon had caused so much commotion. Or how two officers of an elite AAF unit could possibly have failed to recognize it. Or how this small, flimsy contraption, which could hardly have come to earth violently, could have strewn its pieces over ‘a square mil’ of sheep ranch.” (Pg. xv)
They note that with the publication in 1968 of reports from Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, “for the very first time, there was PROOF that the U.S. government had withheld UNCLASSIFIED UFO information from the public. These … reports of Projects Grudge and Blue Book revealed a great deal about the inner workings of the only known official investigation. Moreover, they added considerable weight to a 1958 … book about Project Blue Book by Edward Ruppelt, project director when most of the reports were written. Conflicts within the government on UFO policy were aired, as were some of the failures of the system.” (Pg. 32-33)
When Project Blue Book closed, it concluded that no UFO “has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.” Friedman and Berliner comment, “No threat to national security! Certainly not from cases in the Project Blue Book files. But as for other cases, they would be buried deep in secure filing cabinets and computer databases and could not be referred to in unclassified documents. The mere existence of procedures to deal with reports having national security implications raises a lot of questions the government refuses to address.” (Pg. 38)
They recount, “In July 1989, during the MUFON symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, Bill Moore startled the large crowd by admitting to having cooperated with a government disinformation campaign by observing its damaging impact on a witness. His reputation as a source of reliable information suffered, as did his ability to contribute to UFO research. Whose side was he on? Was some of the information Moore published actually disinformation?... Stanton Friedman had no choice but to … disengage himself from the once-productive relationship with More and his partner, Jaime Shandera.” (Pg. 46)
They wrote of the Majestic-12/MJ-12 documents, “why go to all this trouble to create a phony document? Was it to embarrass and discredit UFO investigators … by getting them to accept the document as real and then revealing it as a fake and those who believed it as pathetically gullible? If so, the hoaxer has let a lot of years … go by without speaking out… for someone simply to stand up and announce, ‘Ho ho! I did it and you dummies fell for it!’ won’t be enough. Proof that it was a hoax will be demanded, and that could prove as elusive as establishing absolute authenticity has so far been. Was it meant to occupy the time and energy of the best people in the UFO community and thus draw their attention away from some other government UFO event…. that was… on the verge of being revealed? More and more, it appears that even if [MJ-12] … is a hoax, there must be something very similar in existence, since the reality of the Corona crash increases in probability with each passing day.” (Pg. 58)
Of the MJ-12 documents, they note, “It is interesting that Dr. [Donald] Menzel is mentioned as having been involved in the question of the origin of the craft (as an astrophysicist, he would be the first choice) but not in the attempt to decipher the symbols found on parts of the wreckage. His knowledge of cryptanalysis and of Japanese, a symbolic language, should have made him an obvious choice for this difficult task.” (Pg. 67)
They summarize, “The final answer to the question of the legitimacy of the MJ-12 documents is not yet in. Those who reacted most negatively to its initial release remain convinced it is a fake, while those who think it is real have no proof. One of the arguments for the doubtful character of the Eisenhower briefing paper is its lack of reference to the crash at the Plains of San Agustin. One possible explanation for this is that the briefing paper could be a copy of most of the original, with the copier omitting any reference to the second crash because, at the time, this had been given only limited credence. Ini this way, the briefing paper could well be both genuine and fake: genuine in its content but a copy made any time after 1947. Admittedly, this is pure speculation.” (Pg. 69-70)
They acknowledge, “There is always the possibility that what crashed on the Foster ranch and even at the Plains of San Agustin was connected to the test flight of a secret American airplane or missile. This would account for its not being recognized by Mac Brazel, and for the way the entire episode was hushed up. At any one time, secret vehicles are being tested in the wide open spaces of the West where the chances of their being seen accidentally are at a minimum… But what was being tested in 1947 is not secret today… it would have been declassified and long since would have become common knowledge. By now… it would have rendered obsolete by subsequent developments.” (Pg. 145)
They ask, “when the disc/balloon remains were first seen by military people, how could the ‘misidentification’ have been compounded? Could the intelligence officer of one of the Army Air Forces’ elite unites have been so foolish as to fail to recognize a common balloon? Maj. Jesse Marcel… was the intelligence officer of the world’s only atomic bombing outfit because he knew how to deal with difficult situations and with unexpected events without jumping to baseless and thus potentially dangerous conclusions.” (Pg. 151)
They conclude, “Two very strange devices crashed in central New Mexico in July 1947. They were not weather balloons, or test rockets, or secret military airplanes. By every indication, what crashed were two alien spacecraft, along with their crews of small humanoids. Dozens of firsthand and secondhand witnesses have attested to the details of the crashes… Except for a few hours on July 8, the story remained completely hidden for more than thirty years, thanks to an unusually effective job of government disinformation. It began to emerge only in 1978 when one of the first two military men to reach the scene of the Corona crash told his story to one of the authors… Had it been generally realized back in 1947 that two vehicles from another advanced civilization had smashed into the New Mexico desert, mankind’s modern history would certainly have been changed. As it is… The people of the world have been kept ignorant of a pair of events of incalculable importance.” (Pg. 192-193)
This book will be “must reading” for those studying the Roswell/Corona matter, MJ-12, and related issues.
This is all made up unfortunately, but it's still really fun to read. It seems that after all of the FOI requests made over the years and prying out of DoD documents and so on that the UFO phenomenon was nothing more than a Cold War disinformation plan developed and seeded out to willing listeners as an excellent cover for advanced weaponry. After all what better way to win the war of hearts and minds than to slip information out which would eventually filter its way over to the enemy (the USSR) that not only did the United States have such advanced technology as to be completely untouchable in that realm but that this technology was not even of this world, inspiring the Soviets to make diligent-albeit wasted-research into an extraterrestrial presence on earth. The irony of this book in particular is that Stanton T. Friedman was very likely complicit in the forgery of documents seen in the appendices. It is thus while I really enjoyed the book as a piece of literature-science fiction even-I can't award the book a higher rating than one star because it's not intended to be a fictional source.
This is a really interesting and entertaining read. It probably helps a bit if you're already interested in the subject but for people that like a good conspiracy it is an eye opener. It didn't feel too biased to me and even if the event isn't genuinely real it suggests some real things that should be considered and makes you think about the whole alien/UFO thing seriously. Good read even for an older book.
I actually really enjoyed reading this book. I have been reading a lot about UFO's and I always enjoy reading Stanton Friedman's view. It was really well written and had a lot of information that I hadn't read previously. I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject and especially if you wonder what did happen at Roswell all those years ago.
Loved it. Well researched, solidly argued case for what really happened in 1947 at Roswell (or more accurately, Corona!). If you're a UFO enthusiast, this book is a must-read...
For my money, the definitive book on the Roswell UFO incident. I won’t say its the 'last word' on the subject because the debate on this case will probably rage on for decades... highly recommended.
A book written in 1992 about a "1947 event", updated in 1997, speaks of the interest in the UFO crash in NM. It is surprising that not one piece of physical evidence exists for public viewing of a UFO crash that took place on July 2, 1947, which has produced numerous books, movies, late-night talk shows, and numerous lecture tours. These authors discuss all the known facts, proposed hoaxes, western tall tales, and outright science fiction research projects. A great deal of ink and paper has been used for a possible event called by government documents, "A misguided effort by a lunatic fringe private UFO community". They closed the doors on the UFO Project in 1969. Why does the topic continue to be on the "entertainment circuit?" This event happened about 100 miles from my childhood home and one needs to understand the happenings in our small rural communities. Just look at the Federal Military Secret facilities beginning at El Paso north going: Ft Bliss (early Army missile research), White Sands testing facility (home of the first atomic bomb), two major Air Force bases, Sanda Research and Los Alamos(Manhattan Project). In addition, many WW II training facilities were located in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico which had a "Restricted/Secret" sign which had conditioned the locals to ask no questions. Neighbors who were "intelligent" were hired by the government for jobs they could not talk about. Weather balloons coming down was a common event. So when the Roswell UFO crash was "found with space aliens" not much was made of it, the government covered it and it quickly became a tourist attraction, one the locals joked about. Later Art Bell's radio show on paranormal and conspiracy theories gained notice. An acquaintance of mine, Ivy Conner had a talk show late on Denver station in which he interviewed a "space traveler", I took the interview as comic entertainment, but the guest was serious. This read looks at all the "talk and theories" and concludes that our government had hidden the facts and that their security had been PERFECT in keeping the secret. A good read, but reveals little.
The Roswell UFO story has been exploited and exhausted endlessly since the 1980s. Far more interesting cases have popped up since—or so I thought!—leaving me ignorant to the details until now.
I was unaware of just how many reliable people have consistently testified about the UFO crashes at Corona and San Agustin, or of the insane inconsistencies in the government's explanations of these events. I'm excited to dig into this famous case further and so glad that I bought this book. I haven't read anything this quickly in a decade.
Friedman was a masterful investigator and thinker, and Berliner is a thoughtful and measured writer. Throughout the book, it becomes easy to identify which author is holding the pen. Their voices work very well together and made for an enjoyable read. Berliner's description of the crash site in the final chapters is beautiful, and Friedman's diatribes about the evidence for a flying saucer landing there in 1947 are insightful.
My only gripe is that (while used as a literary device) the book can be a tad repetitive. As is the case with most UFO books, a more careful edit was needed in my opinion.
Nonetheless, the information presented seems rigorously researched and thoroughly thought out. It was nice to, for once, a read UFO book written by people who understand the need to give dissenting opinions a voice. Circular logic or reporting don't come up often here, but when they do, they are given deserved attention and explanation.
Excited to dig into more of Friedman's work. Often, pre-internet UFO research can feel inaccessible to me. My literary journey into UFO-land has helped in bridging that gap. I also have my eyes on some interesting eBay listings for a DVD-only documentary spearheaded by Friedman, but that's another story.
This book is full of information about the TWO 1947 UFO crashes in New Mexico. Stanton Friedman, nuclear physicist, who did the research for this book and some of the writing, was quite a guy. I met him in Roswell in 2013 and have the photographic evidence to prove it! There is a lot of information here, including eyewitness accounts of crashed spacecraft and aliens, both dead and ALIVE, and the massive government/military cover up of the whole incident. Definitely worth the read.
the government does this funny thing where they lie, whether they need to or not. And it's apparently always been this way, for all current intents and purposes. A really good read that was spurred by a trip to Roswell and the UFO museum there. As for the events of 1947, I guess I'm as sold as one can be in 2025, but like any good story, there's still more questions than answers.
Book does explain how the authors uncovered and investigated the Roswell incident, but it’s too repetitive with other information that makes it a boring read.
DNF @ around 50%. I have to be in the right mood for NF and this wasn't written in a style I like, so I just couldn't get into it, even though I'm into this subject matter. I tried!!