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By Donald R. Burleson, Ph.D.
MUFON SD, New Mexico investigators over the years have, produced an impressive body of witness testimony painting a remarkably clear and consistent picture of the now famous Roswell crash debris. People who were present in 1947 and fortunate enough to see, and in some cases touch, the debris, have described (among other things) thin pieces of foil resistant to being broken or burned. Now a new witness has turned up to add some detail to this ever growing narrative. He is unwilling to be identified, and I will refer to him by the fictitious name of Philip Croft...
My wife, Mollie Burleson, herself a MUFON member, first met Mr. Croft quite by chance and conducted a preliminary interview with him. Subsequently I have conducted two follow-up interviews, and the account that has unfolded appears to be highly significant. Mr. Croft spoke freely and comfortably to us of his experience, but understandably insisted on remaining anonymous. In 1951 Croft lived in Corona, NM, and was employed by the Highway Department, working on roads around Vaughn, Corona, and Carrizozo. He and his friends used to go deer hunting on land near Corona. One day in November of 1951 one of his two hunting companions was Mack Brazel, whom he and a friend had met at the bar in Corona.
This was of course the W. W. Mack Brazel well known to UFO researchers as the ranch foreman who came into Roswell on Sunday, July 6, 1947, with a box of strange debris to show Sheriff George Wilcox and got himself taken by the military for his troubles. Mr. Croft's account adds some intriguing new facets to our understanding of Brazel's involvement in the Roswell incident. On the day in question, the hunting party was out in the prairie southeast of Corona near the spot where Brazel had parked his truck. Brazel suddenly seemed a bit nervous for some reason. He looked toward his truck and said, "I want to show you boys something." Going to the truck arid opening the door, he pulled an odd object out from behind the seat.
Philip Croft has described the object as a piece of "silver-aluminum" metallic foil, "paper thin," and about the size and shape of a dinner plate. Unfortunately he didn't get to touch the material himself, but he had plenty of opportunity to observe it, because Brazel set the object up at.the base of a pinyon tree and suggested that they fire at it-which they did-with 30.06 deer rifles from a distance of about thirty feet, an easy target for experienced deer hunters.
Mr. Croft said that when the foil was hit, it spun a considerable distance up in the air and came floating down "like Kleenex." Upon examining the material, the men found that it showed no effects from having been hit-not even a dent, and certainly no tears or punctures. Keep in mind that the material, which resembled tinfoil, was paper-thin and light enough to float down through the air. I'm not a hunter, but two weapons experts have assured me that a shot from a 30.06 from a lot further away than thirty feet will easily penetrate a car door, and the weapon will of course drop a deer from more than a hundred yards away.
Yet these shots left the strange piece of foil unscratched. (This suggests that rumors of full-scale ballistics tests done in secret on the Roswell material-tests that left it unaffected - may well be true.)
It is clear from this account that in spite of all official efforts to the contrary, and in spite of his son Bill Brazel's having had his own scraps of debris confiscated in 1949, Mack Brazel must have managed to keep an illicit piece of debris from the Roswell UFO crash. As described, the material that Croft observed in 1951 could in no way have originated on this planet, though Mr. Croft himself drew no particular conclusions about its origins. In fact he asked Brazel at the time, "Didn't the army people tell you what the stuff is?" Brazel, in characteristically colorful fashion, replied, "No, and they're sure being a bunch of chicken****s about it." Clearly he was still upset over the whole business, feeling put-upon by his experiences with the military, and feeling anxious that the wrong people not know of his possession of the material. When Croft asked Brazel exactly where he had found the foil, Brazel said, "I got it where they vacuumed the ground." He went on to say that the military brought heavy equipment out to the spot (which we now call the debris field) and literally vacuumed a five-hundred-foot radius of land so clear that there was almost not a weed or a rock remaining. (This account corroborates other witness descriptions of the army's cleanup.)
Brazel said that what little he was able to see of the army's activities he had to watch from a distance, as he was not allowed close up. "They'd threaten your life," he said, according to Croft's memory of the conversation...
I asked Mr. Croft what happened to the metal foil after they had shot at it, and he said that Brazel simply put it back in his truck. Needless to say, one has to wonder what ever happened to this piece of material from another world.
At any rate, thanks to witness Philip Croft, we now know more about the aftermath of the Roswell incident. Mr. Croft told me that on the few occasions over the years when he mentioned this experience to acquaintances, they only laughed at him. As a UFO investigator I assured him that I, for one, am certainly not inclined to laugh. Obviously what he saw was not readily explainable in any mundane terms.
When I asked him if I might use his real name, he said, "No, I think all this stuff is still real sensitive." And how right he is.
