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Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe
For over fifty years an incident near Roswell, New Mexico, has sparked the imaginations of UFO enthusiasts. Did the military recover a crashed "flying saucer" there, along with several extraterrestrial bodies? Has the government gone to great lengths to hide the evidence? Over time these speculations have reached the status of unquestionable truths in the minds of many ufologists.
In this definitive study of the Roswell incident, longtime UFO researcher Karl T. Pflock-who is convinced that some UFO reports are real alien sightings-concludes, after an exhaustive investigation, that no alien craft or bodies were ever found at Roswell. Pflock admits at the outset that he too once strongly believed there might be something to the Roswell alien stories, and he describes how he then came to discover the whole truth. Using formerly classified records he proves that the U.S. government has absolutely no physical evidence of aliens, shows how critical weather data completely refute key claims of Roswell believers, and explains why the case now rises and falls on the testimony of just one witness, who cleverly manipulated leading investigators and continues to do so today.
Pflock's intensive research and access to once-classified documents-including facsimilies of important formerly classified documents, 28 witness affidavits, and the entire Pratt-Marcel interview transcript-make this book must reading even for UFO buffs-believers and skeptics alike- who feel they know everything about Roswell.
In this definitive study of the Roswell incident, longtime UFO researcher Karl T. Pflock-who is convinced that some UFO reports are real alien sightings-concludes, after an exhaustive investigation, that no alien craft or bodies were ever found at Roswell. Pflock admits at the outset that he too once strongly believed there might be something to the Roswell alien stories, and he describes how he then came to discover the whole truth. Using formerly classified records he proves that the U.S. government has absolutely no physical evidence of aliens, shows how critical weather data completely refute key claims of Roswell believers, and explains why the case now rises and falls on the testimony of just one witness, who cleverly manipulated leading investigators and continues to do so today.
Pflock's intensive research and access to once-classified documents-including facsimilies of important formerly classified documents, 28 witness affidavits, and the entire Pratt-Marcel interview transcript-make this book must reading even for UFO buffs-believers and skeptics alike- who feel they know everything about Roswell.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
331 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2001
53 people want to read
About the author
Karl T. Pflock
5 books1 followerUFO researcher and author of both fiction and non-fiction.
He was best known for his book Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe.
He was best known for his book Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 13, 2025
A PROMINENT UFOLOGIST MAKES THE CASE AGAINST ROSWELL
Karl Tomlinson Pflock (1943-2006) was a CIA intelligence officer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, and New Mexico State Section Director of MUFON.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 2001 book, “I am a ‘pro-UFOlogist.’ … I am also an ‘anti-Roswellian.’ These two facts confound both pro- and anti-UFOlogists … how is it possible someone who takes UFOs seriously, even thinks some of them were vehicles from another planet, can also be convinced the event that leading UFOlogists and thousands of UFO buffs had considered and continue to consider ‘the most important case in UFO history’ is bunk? This is a question I hope to answer to everyone’s satisfaction in this book…
“My journey through the tangled Roswell-incident maze once revealed to me I was not as objective as I believed myself to be. All too often, my personal hopes and preconceptions blinkered my thinking, and it was only after some rude awakenings and … sometimes painful reconsiderations that I realized this. Thus this book is not only about the Roswell case itself, but also my inner journey of discovery, a trek I believe has made me… a better UFOlogist.” (Pg. 17-18)
He has a whole chapter about problems with Frank Kaufman (one of the ‘stars’ in Kevin Randle’s book ‘The Truth about the Roswell UFO Crash’). He notes of “those who are the principal advocates of the revisionist Roswell, such as Kevin Randle, who have come to realize that, as the credibility of ‘witness’ after ‘witness’ falls by the wayside, without Kaufman, they have no case.” (Pg. 89)
He observes, “the revisionist Roswell is for the most part a mirage, Roswell as we had come to know it viewed through the distorting lens of creative storytelling abetted by wishful thinking and credulity. What, then, of the conventional-wisdom version of the case? … my intent … is to address selected key issues in light of my research, show that the received wisdom is neither necessarily correct nor as sensational as we had thought, and demonstrate that, even shorn of its crashed-saucer trappings, Roswell remains an important and interesting case, both ufologically and in a more conventional historical sense.” (Pg. 95)
He notes, “The testimony of the late Lewis S. (‘Bill’) Rickett, the senior Army Counter Intelligence Corps noncommissioned officer at Roswell AAF in July 1947, once seemed to me to have added to our knowledge of both what was found by Mack Brazel and what the army did about it, while at the same time introducing some significant misinformation and confusion… It is important to note that in his later years, when most of the interviews took place, Rickett was in poor and failing health. It is evident when listening to and watching him on audio and video tape that his memory was faulty and many people and events were confused in his mind, chronologically and otherwise… it seems fairly likely Rickett did visit the debris field with [Sheridan] Cavitt during recovery operations there… Rickett remembered seeing only the foil-like material at the debris field.” (Pg. 125)
He admits, “As I reviewed my files and writings and listened to audio tapes of my interviews with Glenn Dennis in preparation for writing this chapter, considering the evidence from what I am confident now is as objective a perspective as possible, I was quite frankly more than a little embarrassed. How could I have overlooked or dismissed as unimportant or almost willfully turned a blind eye to so many clues that what Dennis was telling me and others simply did not hang together?... This was completely contrary to my professional training as an intelligence officer…” (Pg. 159)
He states, “Mack Brazel had it right when he told his family the excitement over his find was ‘One hell of a hullabaloo out of nothing.’… To which I would add, what are the odds that a vehicle from another planet would be constructed of materials so closely similar to those used by the NYU [Mogul] project and, on top of that, that such a ‘camouflaged’ craft would crash so conveniently close to the NYU project’s base of operations? Astronomical?” (Pg. 185)
He says of Jesse Marcel, “Researcher Robert Todd obtained Marcel’s complete military personnel file… to see if he could confirm what Marcel had said about himself… Todd found out that not only did George Washington University not have a record of granting Marcel a degree, it had nothing showing he had even attended GWU… Obviously, Marcel had a tendency to embellish his personal history… Taken together, this information about Marcel suggests his more exciting statements about the debris he retrieved… as well as … a debris switch and cover-up … cannot be taken at face value.” (Pg. 200-201)
He says of the ‘Alien Autopsy’ film, “doubters who raised such telling points as the utter uselessness of the obviously unsealed protective suits worn by the ‘doctors’ in the room, the fact that the cord on the wall telephone was not marketed until some years after 1947, the absurd ‘scoop out the guts’ handling of the cadaver’s internal organs, the blood oozing from the scalpel incisions when the decedent had been dead for days, and, of course, the bizarre aspect of the alleged alien itself, which had all the realism of a dummy made for a 1950s ‘B’ science-fiction thriller.” (Pg. 227)
He says of Philip J. Corso [author of ‘The Day After Roswell’]: “It struck me that he really knew very little about the case and was actually in the process of picking as many brains about it as he could…. Corso also made the mistake of telling a tale about how, when he was serving in some army intelligence capacity in Rome during the 1950s, the local CIA contingent had interfered with his activities, jeopardizing a very sensitive operation. He paid a visit to the CIA station chief, read him the riot act, and even physically braced the man, shoving him up against his office wall…. Unfortunately for Corso, I had known this fellow quite well when I was in the agency. I knew he would never had put up with anything like that for a moment---especially given that he was a big, strapping man and Corso was slightly built… I dismissed Corso as just another blowhard and effectively forgot about him.” (Pg. 229) He also lists a number of mistakes Corso made; e.g., He claimed the B-2 Stealth bomber was spawned by Lockheed. It was a Northrup creation… Corso stated the ‘Backfire,’ a supersonic Soviet swing-wing jet bomber was operational in the 1950s---the Backfire was not deployed until the 1980s.” (Pg. 232-233)
This book will be of great interest (to both ‘Pro’and ‘Anti’ UFOlogists) to those studying Roswell.
Karl Tomlinson Pflock (1943-2006) was a CIA intelligence officer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, and New Mexico State Section Director of MUFON.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 2001 book, “I am a ‘pro-UFOlogist.’ … I am also an ‘anti-Roswellian.’ These two facts confound both pro- and anti-UFOlogists … how is it possible someone who takes UFOs seriously, even thinks some of them were vehicles from another planet, can also be convinced the event that leading UFOlogists and thousands of UFO buffs had considered and continue to consider ‘the most important case in UFO history’ is bunk? This is a question I hope to answer to everyone’s satisfaction in this book…
“My journey through the tangled Roswell-incident maze once revealed to me I was not as objective as I believed myself to be. All too often, my personal hopes and preconceptions blinkered my thinking, and it was only after some rude awakenings and … sometimes painful reconsiderations that I realized this. Thus this book is not only about the Roswell case itself, but also my inner journey of discovery, a trek I believe has made me… a better UFOlogist.” (Pg. 17-18)
He has a whole chapter about problems with Frank Kaufman (one of the ‘stars’ in Kevin Randle’s book ‘The Truth about the Roswell UFO Crash’). He notes of “those who are the principal advocates of the revisionist Roswell, such as Kevin Randle, who have come to realize that, as the credibility of ‘witness’ after ‘witness’ falls by the wayside, without Kaufman, they have no case.” (Pg. 89)
He observes, “the revisionist Roswell is for the most part a mirage, Roswell as we had come to know it viewed through the distorting lens of creative storytelling abetted by wishful thinking and credulity. What, then, of the conventional-wisdom version of the case? … my intent … is to address selected key issues in light of my research, show that the received wisdom is neither necessarily correct nor as sensational as we had thought, and demonstrate that, even shorn of its crashed-saucer trappings, Roswell remains an important and interesting case, both ufologically and in a more conventional historical sense.” (Pg. 95)
He notes, “The testimony of the late Lewis S. (‘Bill’) Rickett, the senior Army Counter Intelligence Corps noncommissioned officer at Roswell AAF in July 1947, once seemed to me to have added to our knowledge of both what was found by Mack Brazel and what the army did about it, while at the same time introducing some significant misinformation and confusion… It is important to note that in his later years, when most of the interviews took place, Rickett was in poor and failing health. It is evident when listening to and watching him on audio and video tape that his memory was faulty and many people and events were confused in his mind, chronologically and otherwise… it seems fairly likely Rickett did visit the debris field with [Sheridan] Cavitt during recovery operations there… Rickett remembered seeing only the foil-like material at the debris field.” (Pg. 125)
He admits, “As I reviewed my files and writings and listened to audio tapes of my interviews with Glenn Dennis in preparation for writing this chapter, considering the evidence from what I am confident now is as objective a perspective as possible, I was quite frankly more than a little embarrassed. How could I have overlooked or dismissed as unimportant or almost willfully turned a blind eye to so many clues that what Dennis was telling me and others simply did not hang together?... This was completely contrary to my professional training as an intelligence officer…” (Pg. 159)
He states, “Mack Brazel had it right when he told his family the excitement over his find was ‘One hell of a hullabaloo out of nothing.’… To which I would add, what are the odds that a vehicle from another planet would be constructed of materials so closely similar to those used by the NYU [Mogul] project and, on top of that, that such a ‘camouflaged’ craft would crash so conveniently close to the NYU project’s base of operations? Astronomical?” (Pg. 185)
He says of Jesse Marcel, “Researcher Robert Todd obtained Marcel’s complete military personnel file… to see if he could confirm what Marcel had said about himself… Todd found out that not only did George Washington University not have a record of granting Marcel a degree, it had nothing showing he had even attended GWU… Obviously, Marcel had a tendency to embellish his personal history… Taken together, this information about Marcel suggests his more exciting statements about the debris he retrieved… as well as … a debris switch and cover-up … cannot be taken at face value.” (Pg. 200-201)
He says of the ‘Alien Autopsy’ film, “doubters who raised such telling points as the utter uselessness of the obviously unsealed protective suits worn by the ‘doctors’ in the room, the fact that the cord on the wall telephone was not marketed until some years after 1947, the absurd ‘scoop out the guts’ handling of the cadaver’s internal organs, the blood oozing from the scalpel incisions when the decedent had been dead for days, and, of course, the bizarre aspect of the alleged alien itself, which had all the realism of a dummy made for a 1950s ‘B’ science-fiction thriller.” (Pg. 227)
He says of Philip J. Corso [author of ‘The Day After Roswell’]: “It struck me that he really knew very little about the case and was actually in the process of picking as many brains about it as he could…. Corso also made the mistake of telling a tale about how, when he was serving in some army intelligence capacity in Rome during the 1950s, the local CIA contingent had interfered with his activities, jeopardizing a very sensitive operation. He paid a visit to the CIA station chief, read him the riot act, and even physically braced the man, shoving him up against his office wall…. Unfortunately for Corso, I had known this fellow quite well when I was in the agency. I knew he would never had put up with anything like that for a moment---especially given that he was a big, strapping man and Corso was slightly built… I dismissed Corso as just another blowhard and effectively forgot about him.” (Pg. 229) He also lists a number of mistakes Corso made; e.g., He claimed the B-2 Stealth bomber was spawned by Lockheed. It was a Northrup creation… Corso stated the ‘Backfire,’ a supersonic Soviet swing-wing jet bomber was operational in the 1950s---the Backfire was not deployed until the 1980s.” (Pg. 232-233)
This book will be of great interest (to both ‘Pro’and ‘Anti’ UFOlogists) to those studying Roswell.
August 4, 2018
Fun! Pflock completely destroys the Roswell legend in this fun to read tome. He's respectful towards "eyewitnesses" but, and I use this word with caution, debunks their claims. Great goddamn I love a good read that destroys bullshit and this is it. Pflock wrote for Jim Mosely's "Saucer Smear" until his untimely death as well. Mosely is another character that needs wider exposure. A UFO prankster and semi-believer that loved the culture without buying into the bullshit. I have his autograph because the Supreme Commander did NOT believe in computers.
October 13, 2025
Well researched if a bit one-sided
January 6, 2009
This is not a book about aliens (though the author believes in them), but about how the case of Roswell was man made. It was a case of military experiments and media hype (with many people jumping on the bandwagon for their moment of fame).
The author breaks down events and witnesses credibility, and shows that people ignore facts in their desire to believe in the supernatural causes.
It was a very good book, written more as a history text than a novel, but an easy read.
The author breaks down events and witnesses credibility, and shows that people ignore facts in their desire to believe in the supernatural causes.
It was a very good book, written more as a history text than a novel, but an easy read.
February 4, 2016
A balanced look at the Roswell story. The author said he wanted to believe, but there was no evidence except the witnesses, and there are plausible explanations for what they saw that fit.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews