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a former CIA operative, matuBen Smith, mas,"r.

investigates what really crashed

near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

- I'm not sure I buy that whole balloon theory.

- Really? - Yeah.

Fishburne: The focus: a mysterious journal

found among the possessions of Jesse Marcel,

the first official to arrive at the scene.

- It was not anything from this Earth.

That, I'm quite sure of.

Fishburne: A top cryptologist believes

it may contain coded messages...

- To a cryptographer,

this indicates a certain kind of cipher.

Fishburne: Perhaps details on what Marcel really saw.

- He saw the spaceship.

- I'm laurence Fishburne and tonight,

the hunt for the mysterious journal's author continues.

Was it a fellow officer in Jesse Marcels tight knit group

who knew exactly what he knew?

Ben Smith is hot on the trail.

Was one of these men the author of the journal?

Was it written by a U.S. Army officer

with inside information on Roswell?

- There are some words and letter combinations

I do see in agreement.

- This man is at the nexus of all the secrets.

Fishburne: And what did Jesse Marcel

tell his own family

years before he ever went public?

- He told us that they had told him to change the story.

Fishburne: Did an extraterrestrial spacecraft

crash near Roswell?

The conclusion to our investigation begins now.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Former CIA investigator Ben Smith has traveled

to Louisiana's Gulf Coast to visit Houma,

the hometown of Jesse Marcel

where he spent the last 36 years of his life.

♪ ♪

At ease among his own people

in this quiet bayou community,

Smith believes Marcel may have divulged details

about the UFO crash to family and friends.

♪ ♪

- There are Mr. and Mrs. Marcel.

- They must have liked you.

They have smiles on their faces.

- I was in their book.

She says, "You could sell refrigerators to Eskimos,"

because I was so persuasive in making him talk about things.

And she could see that I was getting things.

And that's him and I together.

I have my Nicholls State University T-shirt on, and--

Oh, my gosh. Such a long time ago.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Linda Corley met Marcel in 1981

when she taped an interview with him

for her undergraduate psychology course

at Nicholls State University.

Marcel was retired and living with his wife, Vio.

♪ ♪

In 2007, she turned her interview with Jesse

into a book entitled "For The Sake Of My Country."

♪ ♪

- I had a little cassette-tape recorder,

and I asked him if it was all right.

He said, "Sure."

Okay. [clears throat]

Please don't break. Please don't break.

- I kept asking all through the interview,

"Can't you tell me something that's not in the book?"

- [laughs]

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Linda is referring to the first book

to allege a government cover-up at Roswell,

called "The Roswell Incident."

It was written by Charles Berlitz

and William Moore in 1980.

It relied heavily on the testimony of Jesse Marcel.

- I asked him that a million times.

"Can't you tell me something that's not in the book?"

- Yeah. - And in the end, he did.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: What Marcel told Linda

was that his son, Jesse Jr.

had described the debris he'd handled inaccurately.

Jesse Jr., who was 11 at the time,

claimed he'd picked up small support struts,

which he called I-beams.

- The most unusual part of the debris that I saw

was the I-beam fragments,

or what I recall as being I-beam,

because they were very light and very strong,

and they had some writing

along the inside surface of this,

and that was the thing that really set this apart

from anything I'd ever seen before.

♪ ♪

- He was talking about the symbols

that he saw on the debris,

and Mrs. Marcel said,

"I think I have Jesse Jr.'s drawing of that,"

and he said, "Well, Jesse got all that wrong anyway."

- Huh. - I had a composition book,

and I'm like, "Well, here. Why don't you

draw me something?"

The clip I want you to hear

is of what he says as he's drawing.

[tape hissing]

- He didn't seem to have doubt

as to his memory of that. - Right.

- That's what he draw. That's the original.

- Huh. - I said,

"Now, will you sign it?" And he said, "Yeah."

I can't believe I had the wherewithal to even say that,

and then he signed it, and he drew the beam,

which you can see is not an I-beam.

- Yeah. It's not an I-beam. - Yeah.

He told me that they were pink and purple,

and so I wrote that, that's my handwriting.

- Yeah.

- So these are some of my beginning sketches

from what he told me.

- Yeah. That's something I could never figure out.

Are we talking about wood, or are we talking about metal?

- He called it wood.

He was specific about that, but he said it wouldn't burn.

- How did he know it didn't burn?

- He tried to burn it with a cigarette lighter.

He said, "It felt like wood. It looked like wood,

"but it wouldn't burn, so it can't be wood.

"It has to be something I've never seen before

on this Earth," that kind of thing.

- Uh-huh. Yeah. Hmm.

♪ ♪

- I asked him, "Why didn't you save some of it?"

- Mm-hmm. - "Why didn't you do that?"

I would've saved a piece of it. - Right.

- His choice of words always stuck in my mind.

"I sat on this premium for 32 years.

I don't want any publicity. All I want is peace."

He said that more than once.

"I just want peace." Why don't you have peace?

He could've sat on it for another 32 years?

Why did he talk? Had to have been bothering him.

Had to have been something he wanted to get off his chest.

- Yeah. That's true.

- I have three tapes that last about four hours,

and during that time,

we had bonded so close together.

- Hmm. Yeah.

- He says, "You're welcome here anytime."

Fishburne: Linda says that when she went home,

she couldn't stop looking at the symbols Jesse had drawn.

- I had studied writing and codes and scripts

for other things, and I came home that night,

and I looked up some different ancient writings,

and it was exactly what he drew--

- Mm-hmm. - Exactly what he drew.

Fishburne: Linda says that what Jesse drew resembled

a kind of shorthand called Tironian notes

that were first used in Ancient Rome around 4 BC.

She says the symbols Jesse drew

signify travel and flight.

♪ ♪

- I went back the next day.

I was invited in cordially, again.

- Mm-hmm. - And I showed him

some of the writing.

♪ ♪

I mean, look. This one here, these slashes here--

- Mm-hmm. - This is almost exactly

what he drew, and there's-- - And what is Tironian?

- There's a decipher for that.

I went into detail about

where this writing could've come from.

- Yeah. I think I saw that, yeah.

- And they got pretty intense about the writing.

I left on good terms. "Come back anytime you want."

- Yeah. - And then the calls.

He said, "Do not use what I gave you.

Everything is a lie."

And the next call was, "Don't go to the media with it."

He was so irate on the phone. - Okay. Yeah.

- I can still see myself.

"I didn't do any-- I'm not gonna do that.

This is for school," you know?

- Uh-huh.

- "I'm not going to the media with this!"

So I never heard from him again.

I was crushed.

- What do you think caused that change?

- Well, I think the second visit,

what happened and transpired there

is why he called and said don't use it.

- Uh-huh.

- And the only thing that transpired in that second visit

were photos of the ancient writings.

- The ancient writings, yeah. Huh.

♪ ♪

- What if he was told that writing means something

to the government or whatever, and you shouldn't tell.

- Uh-huh. - You know, you shouldn't

have drawn it. - Right.

- You shouldn't have written it, you know?

What if it was something that was alien,

and he's too afraid to let it out?

So, you know, those are what-ifs because I don't know

what else to think about those phone calls.

What else can I think?

- Did he ever mention that he was close to anyone on base,

anyone who was especially important to him?

- He talked about Cavitt quite a bit.

He thought extremely highly of Colonel Blanchard.

Colonel Blanchard had refused to transfer him

three months later

and said he was more important and needed there,

but somebody else wanted him out.

- Huh. - And he didn't care

for General Ramey.

He said General Ramey knew it wasn't a weather balloon.

- So do you believe Jesse's story?

- Yeah. I believe Jesse believes.

I was always a believer that Jesse believed.

- Mm-hmm. - Nothing stood out as phony.

Nothing stood out as fake.

♪ ♪

- Did you ever feel like he had a secret

that he wasn't sharing with you?

- Well, he says that "I'm not telling you everything."

- Yeah. - "There's still things

I can't tell you," and I'm like, "Why?"

And he says, "For the sake of my country."

- For the sake of his country. - And that's why I named

the book "For The Sake Of My Country."

Yeah. - Yeah.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Coming up...

- What the [bleep] is that thing?

- Whoa, what is that, man?

Fishburne: what the Pentagon didn't want America

to know about UFOs but she revealed.

- The Pentagon had a secret program that started in 2007.

Fishburne: And Ben Smith gets some news he never expected.

- I don't see enough right now to exclude this person

as a candidate.

There's potential.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Ben Smith has just heard a taped interview

with Jesse Marcel...

Fishburne: In which Marcel says it was his duty

to stay quiet about Roswell.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Now Smith has come to New York City

to better understand why Marcel felt extreme pressure

to keep his secret long after he left the military.

♪ ♪

- Hi, Ben. - Hi, Leslie.

- Come in. - Thank you.

Fishburne: Leslie Kean,

author of the bestselling book

"UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials

Go on the Record,"

says it's risky for members of the military

to speak openly about UFOs.

- For people in the military, there is this taboo,

this stigma around the topic of UFOs.

They're afraid to talk about it, that it might somehow

affect their positions and their careers.

There's the respect they have of their colleagues.

They might-- somebody might think

there's something wrong with them.

Those attitudes are still there, unfortunately.

♪ ♪

- It sounds like you're convinced

there's a taboo about UFOs.

- That stigma is a big factor for sort of the individual

out there who has a sighting.

- Mm-hmm. - And it's also a big factor

as to why there isn't more research being done

by the scientific community

because there's no money to fund projects

that involve something that's taboo, basically.

- Yeah.

- But I think it's gotten a lot better.

I think the December 17th "New York Times" story--2017--

really shifted things.

Fishburne: In December 2017, Leslie Kean broke the story

that the Pentagon was running a secret program

to investigate UFOs, although officially,

the military claimed all UFO research

had stopped in the 1960s.

- The Pentagon had a secret program that started in 2007,

but sources have told me

that there were programs before that.

Fishburne: Kean uncovered not only a top-secret program

but actual proof that military pilots

reported sightings of UFOs more than once.

- The online version of the story,

which is the one that most people read,

included two official Department of Defense

videos taken of objects-- unidentified objects--

and they were cleared for public release.

- This is a [bleep] drone, bro.

- There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the SA.

- Those videos were spectacular,

and they drew a lot of attention to the article,

and as far as I'm aware, this is the first time

the actual government videos have been released of UFOs.

- Nickel six 110, roger. - Oh! Got it! Woo-hoo!

Fishburne: But Kean says that

before the videos were leaked,

the pilots felt intense pressure

not to reveal what they had witnessed.

- These are patriots.

These are people who are responsible

for the lives of American citizens,

highly trained, highly credible.

When they see something,

they're not supposed to talk about it.

There's nowhere for them to report it.

It just--for me, it borders on just

a kind of irrationality and disrespect.

They struggle with this,

and they feel that their own government

doesn't take them seriously.

That's the problem.

- Look at that thing, dude.

Fishburne: Ben Smith sees similarities

between these events

and what Jesse Marcel's family

says happened to him in 1947.

- Jesse Marcel Sr. told his grandchildren

that, Fort Worth, when it was the second press release

with General Ramey, Jesse was paraded into the room

because he was the first individual on the scene,

and he was in the flying saucer report the day before,

and they put out this debris,

and Jesse told his grandchildren

that that was not the debris that he recovered.

- But he had to pretend it was during the press conference?

- He was told to shut his mouth

and to just play along.

That was his claim.

- Back in the day, that was so common

that these high-level military people would,

you know, know a lot but feel they couldn't say it,

and then they'd just go to their graves, and that's it.

- Yeah.

- I have a lot of respect for the Marcels

and the Roswell witnesses, absolutely.

When you see them talking or you hear them,

they are as convincing as anything,

and I have no doubt that they believe 100%

in what they're saying.

They're not lying or anything.

They had an experience. They found something.

They believe that it is what they say it is,

and they are extremely convincing.

You absolutely have to take it seriously,

and I just wish

there was more information to prove them right.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: That proof could lie hidden in the journal

that Jesse Marcel kept among his most prized possessions.

So far, Smith's investigation has proven

that the journal is authentic,

dates from the time of the Roswell incident,

and that Marcel is not its author.

♪ ♪

Smith wants to find out who wrote the journal,

why and what it means.

♪ ♪

- Without intuition to find the information,

you're useless in journalism or intelligence, right?

So you gotta follow your gut 'cause that's where

you find the best gold.

If it was easy to find,

someone would've found it by now.

- Right.

Fishburne: To plot his next steps,

Smith meets with Joe Pappalardo,

a veteran aviation journalist with a deep understanding

of American military history and the Roswell story.

- So Craig, the cryptographer, has some interesting insights

that I did not pick up on,

and right away, actually, he picked up on some things

that could actually indicate code.

Craig. - Oh, hi.

You must be Ben. - That's right.

- Good to meet you. - You, too.

Fishburne: When Smith took the journal to Craig Bauer,

one of the nation's top code breakers,

Bauer thought it could be written in a home-brew code,

a pattern of letters or words invented by the writer.

- To create something just between friends,

it's not that hard to make it really hard to break.

- This potential home-brew code started just after Roswell.

In August 1947, we get this weird kind of writing,

so whatever it is,

it's correlated to that strange date.

Now, we still don't have the author,

so we can't quite tell what it is.

- I don't know. Zodiac was like that,

and they broke that code, didn't they?

As long as it says something,

you should be able to be break it.

- If someone in the 509th wrote the journal,

and we can identify who,

it might lead us to other documents

that allow us to interpret its meaning,

sort of like a broken locket where you have one half

and I have the other.

We put them together, and it's a treasure map.

- So who, in your estimation, would be someone

that we'd be interested in hearing from at the time

who would give him this journal?

- Well, as I understand, the Roswell Army Air Force Base

had almost 8,000 personnel in 1947.

It's a huge base.

But I think it would be helpful

to focus my search on the 509th group

and then his counterintelligence group.

- That would be the kind of person

that would have information

that would be worth safeguarding,

and they give it to the point man

for the whole Roswell incident.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: As the intelligence officer

in Roswell, Marcel was trusted

with the military's most protected secrets,

and according to his grandson,

he stayed silent about what he saw in 1947

to protect his family.

♪ ♪

- When my grandfather started talking about his experience

with the Roswell UFO,

he was careful about what he told us.

He didn't want to tell us something

that we could tell somebody that might lead us

into a position where we could've felt threatened.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Part of Marcel's job

was to share valuable intelligence

with an inner circle of officers

at the 509th bomber group.

Smith thinks whoever wrote the journal might have been

sharing something valuable with Marcel.

♪ ♪

- I'm hoping I can get more handwriting samples

of other people in the 509th group

to see if this might have been passed to him

by somebody else within the bomber group.

- I would suggest if they're in the 509th

and if they were officers,

they may have actually served in World War II.

They handwrote a lot of after-action reports.

If they were officers, there may be handwriting samples

that are in old World War II bombing records and archives,

where they flew in from, the bombing assessments.

There's a lot of information.

You might actually hit a little trove there.

You might not,

but, hey, at least it's a rock to kick over.

- Yeah. That's an interesting point.

I hadn't considered that.

- Cracking this part of your mystery

is only one good search away.

If you find out who through a handwriting analysis,

then you could find out

a little bit more of the motive why.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Coming up, Smith uncovers

the circle of officers in the 509th

who could've shared Marcel's secret,

but will one of them

match the handwriting in the journal?

♪ ♪

matic music]

♪ ♪

- I'm on my way to meet Jennifer Naso,

the handwriting expert.

I have with me a number of handwriting samples

belonging to the people closest to Jesse Marcel

during the time of the Roswell incident.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Ben Smith has been researching Jesse Marcel's

fellow officers in the 509th.

He's gotten writing samples for six individuals,

an inner circle that must have known details

about what really crashed at Roswell.

♪ ♪

- If it didn't belong to Jesse and he kept it

in his most prized possessions,

it had to have belonged to somebody important to him.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Now the question is,

does anybody's writing match the journal?

♪ ♪

- Hey. Come on in.

- I'm back with more work for you.

- Tell me what you have.

- I took the journal to a code breaking expert.

First of all, he took a look at the journal,

and to his eyes, a few things immediately popped up

that suggested there might be some kind of code.

Now, he ran the numbers

and was not able to find any coherent message.

- That does not correspond to a letter.

- So his next best guess was that maybe there was

some kind of encryption system that only the author knew of.

So that gets back to the question, well, who wrote it?

- Who is the author? - Who is the author?

So I have brought a number of handwriting samples...

- Oh. - From key individuals

at the Roswell Army Air Force Base.

Let me start with Colonel Blanchard,

who was Jesse Marcel's direct commanding officer

and the head of the 509th bomber group.

Fishburne: In 1947, Colonel William "Butch" Blanchard

was commander of the 509th bomber group

based at Roswell.

A highly decorated World War II hero

who had helped plan the Enola Gay's bombing of Hiroshima,

Blanchard was in charge

of America's only nuclear attack force.

It was a job in which he would certainly know

about any top-secret operation

involving his air base.

The officer he might have been closest to

was Jesse Marcel.

The Blanchards and the Marcels

were regular bridge partners.

♪ ♪

- We have Walter Haut, the press corps officer

who organized the press releases

and wrote the infamous flying-saucer press release.

Fishburne: As the base public information officer,

Lieutenant Walter Haut was ordered by Blanchard

to draft that famous press release

that a flying disc had been recovered.

In his later years, Haut came forward to say

he believed Marcel had been telling the truth

and went so far as to say

that he himself had glimpsed bodies of aliens.

♪ ♪

- We have Bob Shirkey.

Fishburne: Lieutenant Robert Shirkey

was assistant group operations officer

for the 509th.

If the debris was extraterrestrial,

Shirkey would've been in charge

of arranging its transport

to the Army's top-secret research facility,

Wright-Patterson.

After retiring from the military, Shirkey later

claimed that Jesse Marcel was telling the truth.

- And over here we have Edwin Easley.

Edwin Easley was the provost marshal

at the 509th bomber group.

Fishburne: Major Edwin Easley

was in charge of base security.

He would've been responsible for safeguarding the debris

and controlling which personnel

had access to it.

In this capacity, it's not unreasonable

to assume he knew what the crates contained.

♪ ♪

- He would've been responsible for organizing

the cleanup effort to pull in,

to collect the debris.

We also have Patrick Saunders.

Patrick Saunders was the office administrator

for Colonel Blanchard,

so he would've been involved in all the record keeping

and issuing the orders.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Patrick Saunders

was Colonel Blanchard's top deputy.

He had flown 37 combat missions

in World War II

and had just as many medals as his boss.

As Colonel Blanchard's number two,

he would've been in the room

when Jesse Marcel returned from the debris field

and debriefed the colonel.

- If there's anybody at the 509th bomber group

who knows everything, it's this guy, Patrick Saunders.

So if this handwriting matched,

it would mean everything to the journal

because here is a man who had access to all kinds of secrets

who may have wanted to confide something in Jesse Marcel.

- Okay, so we'll compare these writings to the journal.

So what I notice right off the bat

with the Blanchard signature,

that's all the writing that we have, correct?

- Right.

- Just having the one signature to compare to a extended body

of text writing poses a big limitation to the examination.

From what I see in the Patrick Saunders writing...

- Mm-hmm. - While there's a bit more

than just one signature,

it's really just the one sentence,

and so the limitation is still

the lack of quantity of known writing.

- Right. Right. - It's a bit of a blurry copy,

and so it's hard to tell the pen movements,

and some of the fine and subtle features

of the formations of the letters

might be lost in the image quality of that copy.

Looking at the Walter Haut handwriting

and the Bob Shirkey writing,

this is a more extended sample of writing,

so there's going to be a lot more information,

almost characteristics

that I'm going to be able to compare to the journal.

- Even if you can provide any, even just the slightest

new piece of information on one or the other,

it could help me eliminate one person from the group

closest to Jesse Marcel. And if I have to,

I may have to expand the search

and move out from there

to identify who could've given him this journal.

Fishburne: Smith will leave the journal,

which was so precious to Jesse Marcel,

in Naso's hands, hoping she can uncover its author.

♪ ♪

Coming up, the investigation returns to Marcel's hometown.

What did he tell his family and no one else?

- He said, "There are things

that this world is not ready for."

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Fishburne: As the search

for the journal's author escalates,

Ben Smith returns to Jesse Marcel's hometown

of Houma, Louisiana.

Marcel's granddaughter, Denice,

has convinced the extended Marcel family to divulge

some of the strange things Jesse told them.

- So how is everyone related to Jesse Marcel?

- He was my brother-in-law's uncle.

- Okay. - But I always called him

Uncle Jesse. - You know, we're all cousins.

- Yeah. [laughter]

- My grandmother and Jesse were brother and sister.

- Oh, wow. - Mm-hmm.

- Okay, so do you remember speaking to him a lot?

- Yes. - Yeah.

- We were very close. We lived next door to him for 10 years.

I went over there a lot.

Fishburne: Smith wants to know what they know

from the lips of Marcel himself.

Their memories seem clear.

- Wallace, how old were you

when Jesse shared his story with you?

- I was a teenager. - You were a teenager?

- Uh-huh. I want to say that it was in 1957.

- In 1957, just 10 years after Roswell.

- Yeah. - Okay.

- I was 12, 13 years old or something like that.

- Yeah. Okay.

- He told me, "Don't believe everything

the government tells you," and he started telling me

the story about the crash in Roswell

and that they forced him to lie about it.

Fishburne: This means that two decades

before he told the world

an extraterrestrial spacecraft had crashed,

Marcel told the same story with the same details

to the people he trusted.

- What details did he describe?

Did he mention a UFO crash? Did he--

- He did tell me a UFO crashed.

- Okay. - He was telling me

about what it looked like.

I put two and two together and figured,

I think he's telling me

that we've got people from outer space coming here.

- Okay, and what was your reaction then?

What did you think?

- Looking up at the sky at night.

[laughter]

- Did you believe him?

- Of course I believed him. - Yeah.

- 'Cause I don't think Uncle Jesse

would've lied to anybody. - Right.

- He wasn't that type of man.

- Wallace remembers talking to Jesse.

I don't remember talking to him.

- Okay. - But Jesse told my dad

stories about the Roswell incident.

Fishburne: And those stories went further

than anything Jesse Marcel ever said in public.

- The thing that interested me the most was

that Jesse drew a picture of an alien.

- Jesse drew a picture of an alien?

- Yeah. He hand-drew a picture of an alien.

- Huh. - Yeah.

- My dad lost that picture, but later on in life, he wrote,

"What the picture looks like that Jesse drew for me."

♪ ♪

- It looked like the picture that Jesse drew.

- Yeah.

- That's the first time I'm hearing any stories

about Jesse himself drawing or referencing an alien.

- I don't remember my dad ever saying

that Jesse saw an alien. - Okay.

- Maybe somebody told him about this.

- I--so, Wallace, do you think

that extraterrestrials crashed in 1947?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Did Jesse ever tell you, June,

about his experience at Roswell?

- Yes. - He did?

- He did. I think probably '74 to '76, somewhere in there.

- Okay.

- He started talking to me about it.

- Mm-hmm. - Basically what

they're telling you, too.

He found wreckage.

He said it was not of this world.

- Mm-hmm. - He described the metal,

saying that you could crumble it up in your hand,

but it would automatically go right back like it had memory.

- Mm-hmm. Okay. He used the word memory?

- Mm-hmm. - Okay.

- And my daughter, who was 10 at the time,

approached him and asked him,

"Uncle Jesse, were there any bodies?"

And he looked at her,

and she says his eyes kind of glazed over, and he said,

"There are things that this world is not ready for."

- That's what he told your daughter?

"There are things this world is not ready for."

- Right. - Yeah.

Fishburne: In front of family members,

Jesse displayed emotions

he kept hidden from the outside world.

- He seemed angry at times about the government.

He told us that they had told him to change the story

and that it was not UFO wreckage.

It was a weather balloon.

I think it bothered him a lot,

you know, that he was told to shut up about it.

It was a very notable event in American history,

and he couldn't talk about it.

- Right. - You know, and it was him

that found it, you know, and then had to lie.

- Right. - You know,

so that tore him up.

- Right. - It really did.

I think he needed to express himself about it,

so back in '78, '79, he got sort of emboldened about it

and decided he was going to talk.

- Yeah, but you heard all of these stories

before there was any big media...

- Absolutely. - Sensation about the story.

- Absolutely. He was being open

with family about it.

- My family members were aware of that.

It really upset him a lot that people thought

that he was making it up, you know?

- Yeah. - He had to kind of deal

with some ridicule, and that kind of--

- Well, I know it wasn't from our family

that he got that from. - Right.

- Outsiders would ridicule him and call him Crazy Jesse

because -- - Oh, really?

- Because of when they started hearing about Roswell.

- That must be hard for an intelligence officer,

a decorated veteran to be ridiculed

by his neighbors and his community.

- Yeah. - That's--

- I think that would've been hard for him.

- Well, all the reports have been lost.

All of the original files have been lost,

so at this point in time, it really is Jesse's word

against the government's word, right?

One part of my investigation, and it's just a part,

is to see can we find any proof anywhere that this happened?

- Yeah. - June, did Jesse ever hint

that he might have something more, more information,

more details or maybe something hidden in his house?

♪ ♪

- What he told me is, he came home to Roswell.

He had some wreckage in his car.

- Mm-hmm. - He pulled it out

and brought it inside and showed his family.

♪ ♪

But what other things he might've done, I don't know.

He did not ever tell me that he had anything, you know?

- Okay.

- A piece of the wreckage or anything like that, no.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Coming up, did Jesse Marcel keep evidence

of what crashed all along... - Jesse said he had proof?

- I said, "Oh, I'd love to see it."

Fishburne: Hidden in his house in Houma?

♪ ♪

[dramatic mus]

♪ ♪

Fishburne: After meeting with the Marcel family

in Jesse's hometown of Houma,

former CIA investigator Ben Smith

and Jesse's granddaughter, Denice,

get the opportunity to meet someone outside the family

who claims Jesse shared with him

extraordinary details of the Roswell incident,

secrets that might lie hidden in the coded writing

of the mysterious journal.

- He started off by saying, "Look, you know,

this thing that happened to me was real."

Fishburne: Calvin Parker says

he was introduced to Jesse Marcel

by a mutual acquaintance.

- Your granddaddy said that they staged a site away

from the actual site

to keep the general public away.

They took weather balloons out to the field

and tried to distribute little pieces around

so people could find them.

- That I have never heard.

Fishburne: Parker claims that Jesse Marcel told him

about an elaborate military operation

to retrieve alien bodies and orchestrate a cover-up

to make it look like a weather balloon had crashed.

- The first time he mentioned it,

he said they was actually bodies out.

- He said that he saw some? - Exactly.

A special unit got the bodies, and he wasn't part of that.

- Oh. - But they took them back

to the base at Roswell.

- And he described all of this to you?

- He described every bit of it to me.

- It's so interesting that these are details

that I've not heard before-- - Yeah.

I've not heard these either.

- That he didn't tell Linda Corley,

that he didn't tell his family members.

- He didn't tell us, yep. - That's pretty--

- Well, he felt like he could talk because I told him

that as long as he was alive,

I would never say nothing about it, and I didn't.

To my surprise, he told me--

He said, "I've got something that I want to show you."

He said, "I have evidence.

I have proof of this." - He has proof?

Jesse said he had proof?

- I said, "Oh, I'd love to see it,"

so he told me there's a screwdriver

in the kitchen drawer, go get it,

go down to a hot-water heater and take the top off

and bring it up here to me.

Fishburne: Calvin Parker says that Marcel told him

he'd kept pieces of debris from the Roswell crash

and hidden them inside a water heater in his home.

- I was fixing to unscrew it. I was going to look at these.

- So you actually touched it and put the screwdriver to it?

- Oh, I was ready to when somebody showed up at the door.

- Huh. - Oh, my gosh.

- I don't know who this was knocking at the door,

but he didn't want to talk about it in front of him.

- Right. - So I didn't feel

real welcome there, and I got up and left.

I was planning on coming back the next day,

but I had to go to work.

I went offshore for 160 days, and I got back,

and I couldn't wait to get back over and see

and get that debris.

I went to the house, and I found out he had passed away.

It broke my heart.

- Did your father ever talk to you about the water heater,

about hiding debris here in Houma?

- No. This is literally the first time

I've ever heard this story. If anything, I always was told

that my grandfather didn't keep anything.

Did he ever say why he had never brought it out earlier?

That would've helped prove his story

that he wasn't making it up and is like,

"Hey, people. I really do have proof,"

so I'm wondering-- I'm curious as to why

he decided to show it to you at that point.

- Well, he was real loyal to his country.

- Right. - He was military.

You follow orders when the military gives you orders.

And I think there was

a reluctance there against his conscience

about coming out against an order that he had had.

- Right. - He told me that

when he took this material,

it was a real trip for him to keep it hid,

but he knew that he'd never get to see it again

when they got to Roswell.

- Yeah. - So he,

for lack of a better word, had to steal it--

- Yeah.

- From the cleanup effort. - He stole the material, yeah.

The man was on his deathbed.

- Right. - You could tell

physically that he was having to take something.

- Yeah. - But mentally, he seemed

to be intact, he seemed to be all there.

- Yeah. - He didn't wanna die

with this on his conscience.

♪ ♪

- From a security standpoint, it makes sense that Jesse Sr.

would anticipate continued scrutiny on his family.

- Yes. - And that he might

want to introduce somebody without--

who believes, who we can identify with

but without that public presence.

- Right. - Someone like Calvin.

- Right.

♪ ♪

- There could be some debris left around,

probably right there in that house somewhere,

if it's still there.

- So you think the debris could still be at the house?

- I know it could be. - Huh.

The house is just down the road from here, and--

- Yeah. There's no doubt in my mind.

- And I've been to the debris field.

I've been out there searching,

and it's hard to find anything,

but here actually is a fresh lead in the investigation

that I haven't encountered yet.

- It could mean everything. - Yeah, everything.

- This is probably the best chance

we have of finding anything left of that crash site.

- Right.

- Thank you for taking the time. This has been wonderful.

- Thank you. It's been my pleasure.

- Thank you very much. - Denice, thank you.

- Thank you.

♪ ♪

- Order of business number one is get that home

and see what we can find. - Yes.

- The trickiest part about the debris field

is that even if we find a piece of metal,

we have no idea how it got there.

- Right. - So many people

have been there over time,

before and after.

It could've arrived there in any number of ways,

But if we something hidden on the inside of a water heater,

we know your grandfather put it there.

- Right.

Fishburne: If they could find a piece of debris

taken from the crash site,

it would be an astounding development

in the saga of Roswell.

♪ ♪

Smith and Denice Marcel

will try to get inside Jesse Marcel's old house,

which is only a short drive away.

♪ ♪

- Coming into this cold.

The person doesn't know us.

We don't know them. - Right.

- We just have to be prepared for the gamut.

- I got you.

- Tea and cookies versus shotgun kind of thing.

- Okay. - So I have no idea.

♪ ♪

Let's not say that we're UFO researchers.

- Oh, yeah. No. - We're researching

local family history. - Okay.

- You used to live in the house.

- Okay. - The Marcel family,

in particular,

and we can get into the UFO stuff later...

- Okay. - Once we feel comfortable

that it's not gonna put them off.

- That sounds like a really good idea.

♪ ♪

- This is the part that makes me nervous

but also gets me excited.

- Yes. I know what you mean.

♪ ♪

- Hello. - Hi. How are you?

- Hello. - All right.

- Hi! - Hey. I'm Ben.

- Matt.

- Matt. Nice to meet you. - Hi. I'm Denice.

- Denice used to live here.

Well, her grandfather used to live here.

- My grandfather used to live here.

- Would you mind if she walked me

through a little bit of the property

to show me where things were?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: The owner is reluctant to let them enter,

and so for now, it's impossible

to verify Parker's claim.

♪ ♪

Coming up...

- Whatever they hit is squished,

but all these are holes.

Fishburne: This man claims he has debris

from a UFO that crashed

at nearly the same time as Roswell

but 200 miles away.

♪ ♪

[dramatic mus]

♪ ♪

- I am in Southern New Mexico on my way

to the home of a guy named Chuck Wade.

Now, Chuck Wade claims to have a piece of debris

recovered from a potential UFO crash site.

Fishburne: Ben Smith couldn't get access

to Jesse Marcel's former house

to verify whether it contained

Roswell crash debris.

Now Smith is following up another lead

and meeting with a man named Chuck Wade,

who is convinced he has UFO debris

from a spacecraft that crashed in 1947.

♪ ♪

- Hey. How you doing? - Good. How are you, Chuck?

- Come on in.

- Did your dad have

a relationship with Mac before that July?

- Oh, yeah. - If you're the guy

that owns the bar, everybody knows you.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

Dad owned that bar for many, many years,

and I just loved to be there and listen to the stories.

I was seven years old the year

that the Roswell incident happened there next to Corona.

Fishburne: Chuck Wade's father, Jesse Wade,

owned the bar in Corona where rancher Mac Brazel

first came to show his neighbors

the strange debris he'd found while herding sheep.

Although it is known as the Roswell incident,

the small farming community of Corona

was the closest to where Mac found the debris.

- Mac Brazel found something that he doesn't know,

and recognize at all on the Foster Ranch,

so he came to Corona and asked my father to go out

and see what in the world it was,

'cause he--Mac just flat didn't know.

But my dad was busy, and it was just himself in the bar,

so Dad chose not to close the bar.

Dad regretted that, I'm going to say, immensely.

He'd always say,

"I wished I'd went with Mac to see what was out there."

- Right.

Fishburne: Chuck Wade also wanted

to see what was out there.

After running his own construction company,

Wade has devoted most of the last 20 years

to researching UFOs.

♪ ♪

- So tell me a little bit about some of the sites and debris

that you recovered.

I think it could inform my investigation of Roswell.

- Have y'all studied the crash on the Plains of San Agustin?

- No.

Fishburne: Wade has come to a startling conclusion:

Roswell was only one of a series of UFO crashes

that took place in Southern New Mexico during that time.

According to Wade, there were seven UFO crashes in total.

Five of them occurred during the first week of July 1947.

- The first one here was August 1945.

This one right here, the night of the 1st

to the 2nd of July, 1947.

These three, four, five and six

was about 11:00 on July the 4th, 1947,

and this one up here was in March 1948.

Fishburne: Chuck Wade has a theory

about what caused the spaceships to crash.

- What happened, folks, is,

whenever they put in Los Alamos National Laboratory,

they installed three major, high-powered radars

to guard the skies over Los Alamos.

Fishburne: Wade, who supervised construction

of dozens of air-traffic-control towers

across the U.S., believes powerful radar signals

emitted from the Los Alamos nuclear site

caused short circuits in the spaceships.

- It electrified that craft, and it came down in flames.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Of what he claims are seven UFO crashes,

Wade became obsessed with one in particular,

which he believes crashed on the Plains of San Agustin

48 hours before the Roswell crash.

- New Mexico is basically square.

Corona is basically

really close to the center of the state.

What we call the Roswell incident happened about

30 miles southeast of Corona.

The Plains of San Agustin is over here,

about 200 miles.

♪ ♪

- Chuck started going to UFO conferences.

One of the speakers had discovered

some pieces of debris,

and he wanted to go and look for more debris.

- Mm. - Chuck said, well,

he would help him with that,

and he'd get some guys to come and help dig.

So they did.

That was in 2004.

And they found some stuff.

- I'd love to see it, if I can.

- Well, I think it's right around the corner here.

Fishburne: The Wades have several fragments.

♪ ♪

- Can you tell me what I'm looking at here?

- These here is the foils. - Mm-hmm.

- And then these here have got --

Whatever they hit is squished, but all these are holes.

- Actually, can I remove the glass for a closer look?

- Sure, be glad to.

- And did you take this to the government at all?

- Not going to have any reason to do that.

- Well, I'm just curious, you know?

- No. I'm sure. - If you find a UFO,

I don't know what the government would say,

to be honest.

- I believe they said they didn't exist.

- That's true.

The official position is, you know, they don't exist,

but things are starting to change.

- It's a good question, but no.

I avoid the government as best as I possibly could.

There is a huge, monstrous, gigantic cover-up

on the Roswell incident.

No one in Corona was allowed--

they were ordered not to talk about that crash.

- Yeah. There's a lot of mistrust in the community

among UFO researchers of the federal government.

I think a lot of it stems

from the reaction or overreaction in 1947.

- They found something on the Foster Ranch.

They didn't know what it was or where it came from.

I think Jesse Marcel is telling the truth 100%.

I see no reason for him to do other than tell the truth.

The Roswell incident was from outer space,

and there's not a chance

it was a damn balloon that we made.

- Now, this one is pretty fascinating.

♪ ♪

Can I take a piece with me to get it analyzed myself?

- What do you think?

I don't know. It's okay with me.

- Do you mind if I take this one here?

- Oh, sure. Sure.

- Yeah? - We'd be glad to--

Any of them that you want,

we'll be glad to take a piece off.

I want to know where it came from.

Why is it here? Why don't they tell us about it?

[saw whirring]

- That is pretty hard to cut, actually.

- Yeah. - It's, uh--

Fishburne: Smith plans to get this piece of metal tested

to see what elements it's composed of

and if there is anything about it

that can suggest where it came from.

♪ ♪

Coming up...

- How are you doing? - Good. How are you?

Fishburne: Has this seasoned crash investigator

found the clue that everyone missed?

- There's something under the ground there.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- I'm just outside Denver, Colorado,

on my way to meet David Soucie,

our crash-site expert.

Fishburne: David Soucie is a former accident inspector

for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Soucie has investigated hundreds of crash sites,

so when Ben Smith took him to the debris field

where Jesse Marcel first saw what he believed

to be pieces of wrecked spacecraft,

Soucie started by measuring wind currents.

Soucie's gut reaction:

whatever crashed here wasn't lightweight.

This contradicts the U.S. military's story

that what crashed at Roswell was a weather balloon

or part of the top-secret,

lighter-than-air Project Mogul.

- I'm not sure I buy that whole balloon-drag theory.

- Really?

David collected all kinds of data from the debris field:

wind, geographic features, weather.

I'm hoping that he can eliminate

one aircraft or another.

Fishburne: Smith wants David Soucie

to compare his initial finding

with the Deep Earth analysis

done by Canadian geophysicists

Colin Miazga and Eric Johnson

when they visited the debris field late last year.

Soucie has been communicating with them online.

- I understand you do

ground-penetrative radar, as well.

- Yeah. Yeah. - Okay.

Fishburne: The geophysicists used ground-penetrating radar

and gamma-ray technology

to identify strange anomalies in the Earth...

- Look at that. - Wow. That is interesting.

Fishburne: A kind of scarring that couldn't have come

from a deflated balloon crash.

- So this is the radar. - It doesn't make sense.

I can't understand what that would be.

♪ ♪

- Hey, Ben. - Hey, David.

- How are you doing? - Good. How are you?

- Yeah. Well, come on in. - Oh, man.

I have been dying to see what you've done with that data.

- Well, there's a lot to look at, probably more

than you want to see.

The first thing I want to start with:

This is an overview of the entire site, the entire area.

- Oh, wow.

- That is the reported trajectory.

That's where they found the debris.

- Yeah. - And then from there,

it spread, they said,

as much as a mile in this direction off of that.

- Mm-hmm.

- A bunch of other interesting stuff that we can get through,

and now this is what's really interesting.

This area really intrigues me right down at the bottom here

because the gamma readings

are not consistent with the ground-penetrating radar.

♪ ♪

I've never seen that before.

- Huh. - It doesn't make sense me.

- You might have to walk me through the actual readings.

- All right. - Because I'm having

a hard time visualizing it. - Yeah. Let's do that.

These red areas indicate that the ground-penetrating radar

says it's extremely dense, which is where the rocks are.

- Yeah. - And that sort of thing.

Here's an example of a dense area,

and in this dense area,

you would expect to see low gamma rays because it has --

It's not coming through. It's blocking the gamma.

So let's look at that spot here.

Gamma rays are indicated by yellow or green,

and if there's less gamma, it's blue, and sure enough,

here's this light blue where the rocks were.

- Yeah. - And then here's

the same thing here.

- It almost matches perfectly with the GPR.

- Yes. You could look at

any of these spots, any of these blues here.

- Yep. - And it aligns

with these reds here. - Got it.

♪ ♪

- This spot...

♪ ♪

now that we're just a little above the green line--

We were looking here before, below the green line.

- Right.

- But now above there, that's red.

Let's take a closer look at it.

See all the red? All the red. It's dense.

It's hard and solid, which would block gamma.

- Uh-huh.

- So now I'm going to flip this. I'm going to think,

well, we're going to find a blue spot there.

But instead, look what we find:

the opposite of what I would expect.

- Right. - And not only

what I would expect, but what we witnessed right here.

That was consistent with tight compaction

and blocking the gammas.

- Yeah. - But now it's yellow.

- The highest. - Not only is it high,

it is the highest right there.

♪ ♪

- It's something that-- It doesn't make sense to me.

- Have you ever seen that in a wreck that you--

- No. No. I have not.

I've not seen this before. There's something there.

There's something unique about this spot above the green line.

As an accident investigator

and what I've been doing my entire life,

there's something under the ground there.

There's something making these changes,

these readings different.

- So what could make that kind of contrast,

the high density with high radiation?

- The only thing I can think of

is that in ground-penetrating radar,

a rubber or polyethylene and rubber...

- Uh-huh. - Can create that illusion

of high density.

But it would also allow gamma to come up through it

because it's not going to block the gamma rays.

Fishburne: After analyzing the data,

David Soucie can no longer rule out the possibility

that it was a Mogul balloon that went down at Roswell.

- So, I mean, a Mogul balloon

was made of something like neoprene.

- Exactly, so to me, that explains it.

To me, that is what I would be looking for.

That's the assumption I would make

and go out and try to find that.

Fishburne: Soucie admits that his analysis is just

an educated guess,

and even that is based on a 1995 government report

which provided no physical evidence

but asserted that a Mogul balloon crashed at Roswell,

a report millions of Americans

still don't believe.

- [chanting] Hey, hey, UFOs, people have the right to know!

- If this group of 100 demonstrators is correct,

the U.S. government is covering up

the most important secret of all time:

alien beings who have made contact with Earthlings.

- They said, "Well, what about the bodies?"

How could so many people have come forward and say,

"Well, when I was a kid, I saw this, and I saw these bodies,

"and I saw this stuff, and some Air Force guys

came out and picked up stuff in the desert."

How do we explain that?

Fishburne: At that infamous 1997 press conference,

where the Air Force doubled down on its claim

that what crashed at Roswell was a Mogul balloon,

it also issued a remarkable second report

that some believe undermined its entire explanation.

♪ ♪

- We're confident once the report is out

and digested by the public,

that this will be the final word on the Roswell incident.

Fishburne: This second report

offered what the Air Force hoped

was a logical explanation to appease those Americans

who found alleged eyewitness stories

about aliens at Roswell both believable and compelling.

- Bodies observed in the New Mexico desert

were probably test dummies that were carried aloft

by U.S. Air Force high-altitude balloons

for scientific research.

- Additional research uncovered information

which explained some of the claims of alien bodies

associated with the Roswell incident.

Fishburne: The second report, called "Case Solved,"

was accompanied by a short film

produced by the Air Force.

♪ ♪

- The project's main objective

was to study methods

for returning a pilot or astronaut safely to Earth

by parachute if forced to eject

at extremely high altitudes.

For these tests, dummies were transported up to 98,000 feet

by high-altitude balloons.

Fishburne: The Air Force contended

that anyone who thought they'd seen

the military recovering alien bodies

were actually witnessing exercises

that involved dropping anthropomorphic dummies

from high-altitude balloons.

♪ ♪

- Many of the dummies landed outside the confines

of military reservation

and were regularly observed by local civilians.

Critical examination of alleged alien sightings

consistently match the physical characteristics

of these dummies,

as well as where and how they were used.

♪ ♪

- 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 body bags

to protect them, and when you put all that stuff

together and spin it,

you'll find that it fits perfectly

with many of the occurrences in Roswell during that era.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: At the press conference,

the problem with the Air Force's explanation

was obvious to reporters.

Its dummy-drop exercises didn't take place in 1947.

They only started in the early 1950s.

- They're talking about 1947, but you're talking

about dummies used in the '50s, almost a decade later.

- Well, I'm afraid that's the 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.

Fishburne: UFO author and researcher Don Schmitt

believes the Air Force was disrespectful,

writing off alleged eyewitnesses

as having aging and faulty memories.

- "Oh, it's time compression."

New malady, not even in the medical books,

created by the Pentagon.

"The older you get, you start to not only compress the years

but also the decades." But the problem with that:

All the personnel who were here in '47,

who were involved were no longer here in '52,

so how could they be mistaking wooden crash dummies in '52

if they weren't even here?

- Colonel, let me just go back one more time.

You say that this is case closed,

and people should now believe it,

but with the major hole, though:

You're saying that they're wrong about the date.

What explanation can you give them

other than just saying,

"Well, we just think they're just mistaken by six years?"

- I have no other explanation.

I'm sorry. I just-- I have no other explanation.

I'm looking at the facts as we have studied them,

and I have no other explanation

of that but what I've already given.

- But how-- - Yes, sir?

- Would that make it case closed?

- Because we've reviewed all the relevant information,

and we have finished this, and we're not going to revisit it.

- How do you know that you're not being used?

How do you know that you know the full story?

[laughter]

You're confident that you're not part of any cover-up

wittingly or unwittingly.

- I'm totally confident, but I think Colonel Weaver--

you might have seen him on TV earlier--said it best.

We can't even keep single secrets.

How could we have a conspiracy or a cover-up?

- Well, it happened in 1953.

How could anybody mess that up from 1947?

People's memories fade over time.

- We think that this answers lots of questions,

and it answers them logically and with integrity.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Coming up, closing in on who wrote the journal.

Could it be this man, a highly decorated war hero?

- There are some words and letter combinations

I do see in agreement. There is potential.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- I'm excited to hear about your findings.

- So there are two styles of uppercase Ws

that I noticed in the journal.

Fishburne: Ben Smith is with forensic handwriting expert

Jennifer Naso, who has been analyzing writing samples

from some of the officers in the 509th bomber group.

She is checking to see if they could've written

the puzzling journal that belonged to their colleague,

Jesse Marcel.

Colonel William Blanchard,

commander of the Roswell Air Base,

would certainly have known

about any top secret operation in his sector.

- When we look at the Blanchard,

there are some dissimilarities,

but it's really not a whole lot to go on.

- So your professional judgment would be,

there's not enough data yet to confirm one way or the other.

- Right. There would be no conclusion

as to whether or not he authored the journal

based on just the one signature that we have.

- Right.

- So in the Walter Haut handwriting,

I noticed that's what we would call

a combination style of writing.

Fishburne: Lieutenant Walter Haut

was the public information officer for the 509th,

who was ordered by Colonel Blanchard

to draft that famous press release

that a flying disc had been recovered.

- Where it's not all cursive, it's all not hand-printing,

so some letters have connecting strokes while others do not.

Right away, that's a difference between what I see

in the all-cursive writing of the journal,

so here is the word "and" in the journal.

See the formation of the A-- - Yeah.

- How it starts up around 2:00

and then comes counterclockwise and forms this other loop.

When we look at the "and" in the Walter Haut handwriting--

- Oh, totally different. So already, I get the sense

that this journal was not written by Walter Haut.

- The characteristics that I'm noting thus far

are not similar to what I'm seeing in the journal.

- Yeah.

- The next sample would be

Robert Shirkey. - Yeah.

Fishburne: Lieutenant Robert Shirkey

was assistant operations officer for the 509th.

He also said Jesse Marcel was telling the truth

and claimed he'd seen debris flown out of Roswell

and believed it was extraterrestrial.

- So here we have the word "July"...

- Mm-hmm. - In the journal,

and just note the formation of the uppercase J.

- Uh-huh.

- Here in the word "July," look at the formation

of the J compared to the known writing...

- Mm-hmm. - And the questioned.

- So already, again, I see a deliberate contrast in strokes

that they start to pop as different handwriting styles.

- And what we're looking for is a pattern of writing,

and when Easley creates this drag stroke--

- "Being," yeah. - "Being," it's a long,

exaggerated drag stroke.

Fishburne: Major Edwin Easley

was in charge of base security.

He would've been responsible for safeguarding the debris

and controlling which personnel had access to it.

♪ ♪

- And you see that again. You see that repeated

throughout the known writing, whereas in the journal,

you just have the I-dot above the letter,

so you do have some dissimilarities

in this writing sample, as well.

- Shoot. Well, that leaves us Patrick Saunders.

Fishburne: Patrick Saunders was Colonel Blanchard's

number two, his top deputy.

He would've been in the room when Jesse Marcel

returned from the debris field

to brief the commander.

- There are some words and letter combinations

I do see in agreement,

so one of the words in common between the question

and the known is the word "anything."

And if you look at the writing in the journal...

- Right. - There is a pen lift

after the Y, in between the Y and the T,

and you see that again here.

- Right. - The Y terminates and then--

- That's pretty distinctive. - The same thing here,

and in the known writing-- - Wow!

- We do see that combination, as well,

where that pen lifts between the Y and the T.

- Yeah. - I would describe that

as more of a general characteristic.

- Okay. - But right now,

it is a similarity. - Huh.

♪ ♪

- Also, when you look at the letter formations,

the termination of the Y in all three "anythings"

in the journal terminates downward.

There is no upward-move formation.

It terminates downward.

If you look at the height ratios between the T and the H,

here you see the H is much taller than the T,

and you see that throughout the questions.

The H and the T,

and you also see that the H in the known's

is also taller than the T. - Okay.

- So do you see enough then to exclude this

as a candidate, or is it still a viable option?

- I don't see enough right now to exclude this person

as a candidate.

Of all the samples,

with the Pat Saunders one, there's potential.

- This man is at the nexus of all the secrets.

Because Patrick Saunders would've touched

every document, overhead every phone call,

would've seen everything Colonel Blanchard's seen,

and if he is the author of the journal,

then I really think we're onto something.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Coming up,

did Patrick Saunders organize a cover-up?

- He just mentioned that he changed the serial numbers,

and he destroyed files about it.

- Really?

Fishburne: What did he tell his family about Roswell?

- Do you think he was protecting you

from the secrets that he knew? - Absolutely.

♪ ♪

tic music]

♪ ♪

Fishburne: He was the base commander's number two,

his right-hand man,

but who is Patrick Saunders?

What was his role in the Roswell incident?

What did he believe? And if he wrote the journal

Jesse Marcel kept close for decades,

what secrets did the two men share?

Investigator Ben Smith

has tracked down two of Saunders' five children.

- So you were three years old in 1947,

and you were living in Roswell at the time?

- Yes. We were living in Roswell on base.

- On base? - Yes.

We lived there until about 1950.

♪ ♪

- And can you tell me a little bit about your father?

- Well, my dad was a very proud officer.

He was a very personable man, and while he could be serious,

he could also be lots of fun to be with.

- Can you tell me a little bit about his role

at Roswell Army Air Force Base?

- He was in charge of assigning the troops

to the cleanup effort at the crash site.

- He was involved in the first meeting

they had after the crash with Colonel Blanchard.

- And what was your reaction when you first found out

about your dad's role

at the Roswell Army Air Force Base at this time?

- You know, I wasn't even born when it happened.

Years later, I hear my sisters asking him questions

and things like that,

but I just thought everybody's dad was cool like that.

[both laugh]

♪ ♪

- Do you know if he ever saw or handled the debris

or any intelligence reports

about descriptions of the debris?

- He said he knew it wasn't a weather balloon.

- So your father said

it was definitely not a weather balloon?

- Absolutely. That's one of the things I remember him

telling me more than once

and that he knew about weather balloons

because he dealt with them with spying over Russia.

He did tell me that the debris helped to develop

the stealth jet fighter

and that there was a similarity

between the jet fighter

and the thing that crashed at Roswell.

- That is fascinating.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Patrick Saunders' daughter

says her father gave her a well-known book

about the Roswell incident

and wrote comments in the margins.

- He wrote down page numbers,

and then he highlighted sentences

that he thought were very important.

On page 142, he highlighted, "Patrick Saunders was a major

"and assigned as the base adjutant.

"His job would've required him accomplish paperwork

"surrounding the assigning of the troops

to clean up the debris."

- Did he ever share any names

about who might have cleaned it up?

- No. He just mentioned that he changed the serial numbers,

and he changed files or destroyed files about it.

- Really? - Mm-hmm.

- So your father, in some ways, was involved then

with the cover-up-- - Yes.

- And changing the serial numbers of the soldiers--

- Of the men who cleaned up the debris.

- Wow. And he also destroyed files.

- Mm-hmm. - Huh.

- Or changed them.

♪ ♪

- A key figure to the whole question: Jesse Marcel Sr.

did confirm there was a cover-up,

that he was not holding the actual debris

in the original press photo.

- Yes. He was concerned about Major Marcel

and the things that he was saying.

He didn't say he shouldn't have said them.

He just showed--

voiced concern about talking about these things.

♪ ♪

- You know, Jesse Marcel

seemed a little bit distraught

by the fact that he had to retain this secret

and lie to the public for the good of his country,

what he believed was important

to national security.

Did you ever get a sense that your father was disturbed

by the official government line

about what was recovered there?

- I think it was hard for him

to keep the secrets that he knew.

Even if other people were talking about them

and writing books about it,

I think he struggled with that.

- He took his role as officer in the Air Force

and ensuring national security--

he took that very seriously.

♪ ♪

So, yeah, he did what he had to do

and was instructed to do and made no apologies.

♪ ♪

- You know, we were warned not to talk about Roswell

outside the family,

and we generally didn't talk about it.

This is the first time

I've really talked to people about what he said.

- Some of the threats that others have described

were pretty intimidating,

right, threats to your career,

threats to your safety,

threats to your legacy and perhaps even--

- Your entire family, your entire family was at risk.

- So do you think he was protecting you

from the secrets that he knew?

- Absolutely.

♪ ♪

- He said that the world wasn't ready to know the truth

about what happened at Roswell,

and I asked him what he meant by that, and he said,

"Well, it would cause social upheaval and problems."

- Why? - They weren't sure

whether the beings were friendly or not.

Fishburne: By the term "beings,"

she said she understood her dad

was referring to extraterrestrials,

the aliens who had sent the spaceship

that crashed at Roswell to Earth.

- Knowing your dad,

what do you think happened at Roswell in 1947?

- Knowing my dad, if it was nothing or a weather balloon,

he would've just said what it was, and let's move on.

- Do you feel like he had answers

to who these possible beings were,

where they came from and what they wanted?

- I think he was full of questions about them.

♪ ♪

I don't think he had come up with all the answers

about what they found at Roswell.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Coming up, how close has Ben Smith come

to unlocking the secrets

of what really happened at Roswell?

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- I think a guy by the name of Patrick Saunders

could've written this journal.

- Wow. - That actually got me

pretty excited. - That is interesting

because it's a whole new person

to take a very close look at.

That opens up a whole other sort of avenue, doesn't it?

- It really does.

Fishburne: The real possibility

that one of Jesse Marcel's

fellow officers in the 509th, Patrick Saunders,

wrote the journal that was in Marcel's possession

is an incredible twist in Ben Smith's investigation

of what happened at Roswell.

Now Smith wants to go over the results

of his investigation with Joe Pappalardo,

the veteran aviation journalist

he has been consulting with from the start.

- No explanation is going to be complete

without a physical component, probably.

Please tell me you found a spaceship.

- Oh, dude, I wish I could tell you

that I came back with the smoking gun

to prove that it's definitely a Mogul balloon

or it's definitely an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

I haven't found anything definitive either way,

and that is frustrating.

- Well, if it was easy, it would be cracked by now,

so I'm eager to hear what you actually have uncovered.

- Chuck Wade claimed that he had a piece

of alien spacecraft.

The lab unfortunately could not find anything

extraterrestrial about the metal.

For me, it doesn't really impact

the Roswell question either way.

It was collected on the Plains of San Agustin

some distance away, except that it's a knock

against the established evidence of ufologists.

- So in terms of the probable crash site,

I knew you were gonna bring some pretty cool technology

to investigate that.

Did you find anything that would lead you

to think that something happened there?

- We found a pretty strange magnetic signature

close to what would've been described

as the impact identified by witness accounts.

We took some soil samples, but we couldn't actually find

when or why this anomaly was created.

We haven't found any evidence that definitively proves

something extraterrestrial crashed here.

- Did you find anything that would indicate

that something else crashed?

- To the south of the established debris field,

the FAA crash-site investigator

found a strange contrast in data,

that we don't know what it means.

It's not metal because our magnetometer

didn't pick up any metal.

There might be something

that could be some kind of plastic or neoprene layer.

- That would buttress that argument

that a balloon crashed there,

and here is an actual physical remain from it.

That would be about as close to a smoking gun

as something who doesn't believe in UFOs,

like myself, would cling to desperately, probably.

- Yeah. Well, a lot of the facts are fuzzy still,

and I'm still trying to piece the puzzle together,

but I feel confident that the government lied

to the American people

about what it collected at that debris field.

There were others like Jesse in that unit at the 509th group

who had some of the same ideas.

I've spent a lot of time now with the Marcel family,

and I think at the very least,

what they wanted was vindication.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Jesse Marcel's three grandchildren

have been eagerly awaiting the results

of Ben Smith's investigation

and want to know what he has found out

about the strange journal.

- Thank you, guys, for making

yourselves available to chat with me.

I wanted to circle back with you

and share some interesting turns in the case

and some unexpected surprises.

There's one thing that's still missing

from this investigation, and that's evidence.

- I mean, there's a piece out there somewhere.

- Well, we didn't find anything yet.

- Sure. - Jesse, you were there

with me in Pennsylvania

when we went to the codebreaker.

Without the key, the other half of the puzzle,

we can't crack that home-brew code,

so what's left is to keep looking for that other half,

but that makes an interesting challenge

because we didn't know who wrote it.

I refocused my efforts back on the inner circle

at the 509th group to see if I could identify

who might have written the journal.

I collected a few more handwriting samples.

There was one individual who actually,

with the short sample that we had,

matched to some degree that we couldn't rule it out.

- Ooh, interesting.

- This would've been the base adjutant at the 509th group--

- Okay. - The second-in-command,

a guy named Patrick Saunders.

He was really close with Colonel Blanchard,

so close, in fact,

that Colonel Blanchard was his best man at his wedding.

- Oh, wow.

- For me as an intelligence officer,

if I'm looking for somebody with access to information,

this guy is as close as it gets.

- Wow. - That's very exciting.

- Did your grandfather ever mention that name to you?

- I don't recall that name coming from him.

- Obviously, they had a relationship for Grandpa

to have ended up with that journal.

- I was able to track down his children.

A lot of the things Patrick Saunders

told his children matched what Jesse Sr.

told you three, that it was something not of this world.

And there was a cover-up. - No kidding.

- And he even mentioned that he was directly responsible

for organizing the cover-up by changing the names

and the personnel records of people

involved in the cleanup effort at the debris field.

- Oh, my gosh.

- Another echo in Patrick Saunders' story with his family

is he said almost the exact same things verbatim:

"The world isn't ready for this kind of information."

- Oh, yeah.

- And, Denice, you were with me in Houma.

Your cousin mentioned the same thing.

- Yep, exact same words. - His eyes kind of glazed over,

and he said,

"There are things that this world is not ready for."

- I wonder if they discussed it to come up with almost,

like, the same terminology.

This is just so completely amazing. [laughs]

- I think you're closer to the truth

now than we've ever been or anybody's ever been.

- Sounds like it.

- Another interesting comment Patrick Saunders made

was actually about Jesse Sr.

He thought that Jesse had gone too far,

that he had said something he shouldn't.

He had told the public too much.

- When Grandpa came out in 1978

and told the story about what had happened,

I wonder if that worried him a little bit

because I know it would worry me

if I was trying to keep something covered up,

and this man just came out and said,

"No. What everybody saw wasn't something from here."

- Yeah. The duty to keep quiet

is a pretty powerful commitment.

- I think he was courageous for coming out and telling it

because he was going against the protocol.

He felt that everybody deserved

to know what the truth was

and that the cover-up needed to end.

- Mm-hmm.

♪ ♪

You know, we started this journey together

trying to figure out the journal

and to prove with evidence

that your grandfather was telling the truth.

Now, we didn't quite get to either of those ends.

How do you feel about this investigation,

and what does it tell you about your grandfather?

- If anything, you've added

more credibility to those stories,

and I think we're getting closer than ever

to resolving this.

- I'll just echo that.

I think that everything that you've come across

has actually more or less confirmed for me

that Grandpa and our dad were telling us the truth

and that they did want everybody to know

what really did happen.

- I looked at the journal recently, and I found a quote

that really captures sort of the investigation,

and the quote was,

"Keep your eye on the doughnut and not the hole."

If we just focus on the lack of evidence,

the hole in the center,

we miss all the evidence that we have found.

I think that this journal has more secrets to give,

more evidence to point me to than what I've found so far,

and I'm reluctant to simply put it away.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: To some, Jesse Marcel

is a courageous truth sayer.

To others, a man who let his imagination

get the best of him.

Either way, he believed

he'd witnessed an extraordinary event,

and he was not alone.

I'm Laurence Fishburne,

thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries".