UFOlogists Ask: Was Truman in Roswell?
Published: 12-31-96
The Associated Press
Many flying saucer researchers believe the truth is out there. And they're looking for it in presidential libraries in Kansas and Missouri.
Telephone calls and visits by "UFOlogists" have been a workplace reality at the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman presidential libraries since the mid-1980s. That's when interest surged in the story of a crash of an alien spacecraft in July 1947 near Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico.
The researchers who frequent the Eisenhower library in Abilene, Kan., and the Truman library in Independence, Mo., are often looking for information about the whereabouts of the two presidents on certain dates, among other things, library staff said.
UFO researchers also inquire about the authenticity of a Nov. 18, 1952, briefing paper allegedly prepared for Eisenhower, elected president days before. The document appears to detail a federal panel known as Majestic-12, or MJ-12, allegedly established by Truman in 1947 to investigate the Roswell crash.
The archivists at both libraries have little to show the researchers. Nor are they inclined to verify the authenticity of the various genuine-looking documents presented them by UFOlogists.
"We have never found a document in our files that says anything about a Majestic-12 or MJ-12," said Herb Pankratz, an Eisenhower Library archivist.
The document surfaced in 1987 after it supposedly was sent anonymously to a member of the UFOlogist community. The Truman Library staff received its copy the same year, with a request that they verify its authenticity.
The library would not.
The alleged Majestic-12 document and related papers are available at the Truman Library, with disclaimers that they do not represent official library holdings.
"If you are a true believer, you have to learn to read between the lines of government documents," said Pankratz, who "by default" has become the library's unofficial expert in all things alien.
Although archivists have not been able to help with the "Majestic-12" documents, they have been able to provide some answers about the presidents' days when the Roswell incident allegedly occurred.
Truman was president at the time, but he wasn't in New Mexico. He spent the 1947 July Fourth holiday at the Virginia estate of Stanley Woodward, then chief of protocol at the State Department, archivists said.
As for Eisenhower, some UFOlogists concentrate on a trip the 34th president made to Palm Springs, Calif., on Feb. 20, 1954. Some researchers speculate he traveled to nearby Edwards Air Force Base that day to view the remains of the aliens and their spacecraft, Pankratz said.
Eisenhower's appointment books, however, indicate the president broke a cap on a tooth and visited a dentist on that date.
