Perhaps the most direct way to assure that something never happened is to not leave any records that it ever did. This creates plausible deniability. And so it is with Roswell. The paper trail cover-up of the recovery of a UFO in 1947 was so very thorough that perhaps no event in history was so effectively concealed. Credible testimony and an examination of official records related to the crash incident shows that many of these documents are “missing:”

• The Roswell Base Commander's official Air Force records for the year 1947

• An intelligence agency budget for the year 1947

• Flight, pilot, and visitor records to and from the Roswell Base after the incident

• Certain base expense reports for the period involved

• Records on the development of exotic "memory metal" similar to that found as crash debris

• Incoming/Outgoing messages from the Roswell base for the time period in question

Additionally, two Roswell Base officers have confessed that they themselves were engaged in the destruction of records related to the crash.

From budgets and expense reports to flight records and science documents, to base messages and officer histories–this paper trail destruction covered nearly every aspect of the UFO crash recovery operation.

THE ROSWELL BASE COMMANDER RECORDS ARE GONE

WILLIAM "BUTCH" BLANCHARD, ROSWELL BASE COMMANDER

The repository of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base maintains an online index of the appointment books, diaries and papers of all notable Air Force officers who have passed or retired. A September 8, 2025 inquiry to the Agency’s archivist, Jessica Hills, was made by this author for the records of the Roswell Base Commander, Colonel (later General) William “Butch" Blanchard for the year 1947. Although the index indicates that there are 4 cubic feet of records for Blanchard spanning every year of his service, only the year 1947, the year of the Roswell crash when he was Commander of the base, is missing. This is highly curious and raises justifiable suspicion. Blanchard has been implicated in the UFO crash retrieval and cover-up by numerous witnesses of high rank who were there at the base at the time.

In a succinct reply to this author, the archivist explained, “General Blanchard’s records for the year 1947 do not appear in our collection at this time. That year's documents for him may be regulated by security clearances or the records for that year were not ever entered into our system for some reason. Per your request, our offices will review the collection to see if more information can be provided. Please allow 150 days for processing.” Of course, the idea that a Base Commander's papers from well over three-quarters of a century ago are still classified–and only those papers for the year of the crash incident–strains credulity. Equally unlikely is that of the four cubic feet of material, it is just that year's documents that are absent. Far more probable is that something could somehow be reflected in these records that would shed light on the true nature of the crash. Such records were either purposely never made, were destroyed, or were removed and never entered into the Air Force document system.

MISSING CIA 1947 INTELLIGENCE BUDGETS

The CIA was established two weeks after the Roswell crash, on July 26, 1947 and became operational six weeks later. The former Director of the American Federation of Scientists, Steve Aftergood, sought the intelligence agency's budget for 1947 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The agency's initial reply was that his request was denied. The agency cited applicable FOIA exemptions to such requests, including national security-related exemptions.

Over several years in the 2000s, Aftergood filed several complaints and appeals to compel the CIA to release this fiscal year budget information. Prior, it had released other requested years and time spans, but strangely they denied this specific request for the Roswell-year budget records. Frustrated, Aftergood filed a FOIA lawsuit. In response to the lawsuit, the CIA admitted that they were unable to locate any fiscal records, including expenditures, for the year 1947. Changing about-face on what it had originally wrote to Aftergood, they finally stated, “We are unable to locate a document containing, or a series of documents from which we may deduce, the US intelligence budget for Fiscal Year 1947.”

PILOT SAYS FLIGHT RECORDS TO AND FROM ROSWELL ARE MISSING

Ben Games was a well-known pilot and later the CEO of a Caribbean airline company. Some years ago Games, at age 82, told reporter Billy Cox and this author that he was the personal pilot for General Laurence Craigie for six months in 1947. Craigie headed Research and Development for the Air Force at the time and later instituted “Project Sign", the first official UFO government study effort and precursor to Project Bluebook. He said that Craigie was dispatched by General Curtis LeMay to Roswell to investigate the crash. Games said he flew Craigie to Roswell and that Craigie was tight-lipped about what he learned during his overnight stay. Games said that after the base visit, he flew Craigie back to meet with President Truman. Games stated that “The records of the flight when I ferried Craigie from Bolling Field in DC to NM and back are for some reason missing. I checked. They were either not entered into the system or they were removed.” He saw other flights to and from the base during the time, and suspects that their flight records are also gone. It is interesting too that it was General Curtis LeMay (who sent Craigie to Roswell) who was the very General that the late Senator, General Barry Goldwater, said yelled at him to never ask again for access to the "Blue Room" at Wright Patterson AFB where alleged UFO artifacts were believed to be stored.

ROSWELL BASE BUDGET RECORDS FOR 1947

MILITARY PILOT BEN GAMES

Richard Clayton Harris, Jr. was the Budget and Fiscal Officer at the Roswell Air Base in 1947. On Feb. 12, 1997, on the Strange Universe TV show, in an interview with author Kevin Randle, Harris admitted that the crash near Roswell was in fact of a “space ship”. He said that he had allotted funds for the cover-up and clean-up of the Roswell crash. On August 12, 1997 (exactly six months to the day that the interview first aired) he was found dead at age 82 in his home under mysterious circumstances. Harris’ late daughter Ann told this author that, “Dad allocated the money that was necessary for the crash recovery. He allowed for the funds to pay for housing and food for extra personnel, and for extra fuel for unscheduled flights out to Ft. Worth and to Wright.” No such expenditure records have ever been found – or were made not to be found. Ann also believed that her father was murdered and says that both the CIA and the Albuquerque police investigated it.

SCIENCE REPORTS ON ROSWELL-LIKE “MEMORY METAL”

The year after the Roswell crash, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (to which the crash debris was flown) awarded defense contractor Battelle Memorial Institute a contract to begin development of exotic titanium-based alloys. This included a Nickel-Titanium alloy (Nitinol), the first-ever shape memory alloy. Such material that can “remember” its original shape when crushed was reported to have been found at the Roswell crash site. General Arthur Exon, Base Commander of Wright in the 1960s, told researchers that the recovered material from Roswell included a Titanium alloy, though “the processing was different.”

The Battelle memory metal report that had been “missing” was titled "Second Progress Report on Contract AF33 (038)-3736" and was completed for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1949. It is authored by C.M. Craighead, F. Fawn, L.W. Eastwood, and Elroy John Center. Elroy Center later in life confessed to having been tasked to analyze engineered material that “was not from Earth”. His role in the cited Battelle study was to assure ultra-purity of the Titanium. Such purity is required to create the “memory metal” effect.

Though reference to the Progress Report is cited in footnotes in technical papers on novel alloys, the actual Progress Report could not be located. Battelle archivists and Wright base’s Manager of Special Collections both told this author that they were “unable to locate the document” despite references to it in the technical literature.

This author alerted fellow researcher Billy Cox, who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that the Department of Defense release the report. Over a year later, the document was released, with over 25% of the content redacted. Though originally “missing”, the force of FOIA secured it. It was found to contain “phase diagrams” or “recipes” on creating Nitinol shape memory alloy.

Although Nitinol is not identical to the Roswell debris material, it represents our best attempts at re-creation of the found memory metal. The impetus for this "shape-recovery" metallurgical research has to be the crash debris discovered at Roswell in the summer of 1947. More information on this chapter of Roswell can be found in the Article Archive section of this website under the heading “The Study of the Roswell Memory Metal.”

ROSWELL BASE INCOMING/OUTGOING MESSAGES FOR 1947

The GAO (General Accounting Office) reported in its Roswell investigation that Roswell Army Air Force Base incoming and outgoing messages and activity records for the October 1946-December 1949 time period were destroyed under unknown authority.

Key incoming and outgoing messages from the RAAF Base in 1947—specifically administrative records from March 1945 to December 1949 and outgoing messages from October 1946 to December 1949—were destroyed without proper authorization or documentation, leaving a notable gap in the official communications record during the time of the incident.

What Was Destroyed

• Administrative Records: All files covering general administration, including finance, supplies, buildings, and other operational matters from March 1945 through December 1949, are missing.

• Outgoing Messages: Internal communications sent from the Roswell base to higher commands or other military units, covering all outgoing traffic from October 1946 through December 1949, are similarly unaccounted for.

Significance of Missing Messages

These destroyed messages would have detailed how base officials communicated the events and their own explanations of what happened to superiors at the time of the crash.

The loss of such relevant documents was discovered during a 1995 GAO inquiry requested by Rep. Steve Schiff, which found no explanation for who destroyed the records or why the destruction occurred. By destroying records for both the year before and two years after the July 1947 incident, destruction of specific documents from the month and year of the incident becomes less obvious and easier to excuse.

Only two official 1947 documents remain: a unit history report from the 509th Bomb Group/Roswell Army Air Field and an FBI teletype message, neither of which includes the internal military messaging that would have provided deeper insight into decision-making and information flows during the incident.

THE MEN WHO ADMITTED TO ROSWELL RECORDS DESTRUCTION

PATRICK SAUNDERS, ROSWELL BASE ADJUTANT

In addition to Roswell Base Budget and Fiscal Officer Richard Harris, cited above, there is another, even more significant confession to such records destruction. It comes from Major Patrick Saunders, who was the Base Adjutant at Roswell Army Air Field base in 1947. A base adjutant in the military is an officer who acts as the principal administrative staff assistant to the commanding officer of a base, overseeing personnel management, administration, and correspondence. The base adjutant is responsible for ensuring the smooth operation of administrative functions, managing records, handling orders and reports.

When first contacted by researchers including Kevin Randle, he said “it was all a big joke.” But when pressed for specifics about if there was any truth to any of the rumors he said "I can't specify anything."

Saunders bought several copies of Roswell-related books, and wrote in his own handwriting in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell: "Here's the truth and I still haven't told anybody anything!" This comment was placed on a specific page entitled “Damage Control”, crammed on the top. The page of the book he wrote on related to the impact site being cleaned, soldiers debriefed and the bodies and the craft removed, and the ensuing silence.

Saunders confided in friends and family the truth in the months before he died, and planned on making a videotaped confession. He also said that they were faced with a technology greater than ours and that “we had no idea what their intentions might be.”

In a letter dated February 20, 1997, Saunders’s daughter wrote to author Kevin Randle stating, “At one point he bragged to me about how well he had covered the paper trail associated with the clean up!” Given his role as Base Adjutant and the responsibilities that entails, he would have indeed been uniquely positioned to do so.

BLOCKING HISTORICAL INQUIRY ABOUT ROSWELL

Missing records can facilitate the cover-up of an event by erasing crucial evidence and obstructing accountability. Records can be intentionally never made about an event, or they can be purposely removed or destroyed. These actions undermine historical, legal and fair evaluation of controversial events like Roswell. Records that should exist about Roswell do not. The question is, why not? An errant balloon, suggested as the reason for Roswell by the Air Force, could not be the reason for such complete documentation destruction covering so many aspects: officer records, science records, pilot records, budget records, intelligence agency records. and incoming/outgoing base messages.

In the case of Roswell, the absence of documentation can be as telling as the documentation itself.

Thanks is extended to researcher/author Tom Carey for his assistance.