Zone 51

Sous ce titre se cache un article qui parle de surnaturel au sens large... Pour ce premier numéro (NDMM: j'espère pouvoir en faire plusieurs... A condition bien sûr d'avoir le temps et que vous aimiez ce genre d'articles), je vous parlerai de nos amis les extraterrestes! Eh oui: je suis un grand fan de la géniale série X-Files! Cette fois-ci, je vais vous raconter l'histoire du fameux crash de Roswell, en 1947 (ça fait 51 ans cette année)! Bien entendu, vous ne trouverez pas ici de révélations issuent de la CIA ou du Pentagone: ce ne sont que des informations glanées, ici ou là, dans divers magazines tels que "Facteur X" en vente chez votre libraire... Un conseil: achetez-le! Il est pas cher et très "amusant"...

Mais bon, revenons à nos moutons, ou plutôt devrais-je dire "à nos extra-terrestres"!

Tout d'abord qu'est ce que la "Zone 51" qui donne son nom à cet article?

Elle se trouve dans le désert du Nevada, à environ 190 Km au Nord-Ouest de Las Vegas... Dans cette zone, grande comme la Suisse, la carte devient d'ailleurs muette... Rien ne devrait s'y trouver... Pourtant, il y a des montagnes, des ravins terribles, de gros bâtiments... et une immense piste d'envol de 9.5 Km de long! Mais, tous ces occupants semblent coupés du monde...

L'accès à cette zone est interdit, des panneaux indiquent d'ailleurs que "l'utilisation de la force armée est autorisée à l'encontre des intrus" et son espace aérien est le plus inviolable de tous les USA! C'est le teritoire de la Nellis Air Force Range et du site nucléaire du Nevada, plus connu sous le nom de "Area 51"...

Cette zone fut établie en 1954 pour servir de base secrète à la Lockheed Aircraft Corporation qui devait mettre au point des avions-espions pour la CIA et le Pentagone. A titre d'exemple, le bombardier Furtif "Stealth" fut testé sur cette base... Au niveau des anecdotes troublantes, l'US Air Force n'a reconnu l'existence de cette base qu'en 1994, et seulement encore à la suite d'un terrible accident où des ouvriers mourrurent à cause d'étranges incendies chimiques! Bien entendu, la rumeur veut que sur ce site, il n'y ait pas que de la technologie américaine... mais bien extraterrestre!

Les révélations, à ce sujet, viennent d'un ancien employé de la base: Bob Lazar! Ce dernier avait travaillé cinq mois là bas à un poste scientifique. Lazar a parlé d'une zone souterraine S4 où il aurait travaillé sur de la technologie si avancée qu'elle ne pouvait pas être terrestre! De nombreuses informations sur les ovnis se trouvant dans cette base ne firent que confirmer les soupçons de Lazar...

On peut difficilement mettre en doute les qualités scientifiques de Lazar: il a effectivement travaillé pour l'armée (ce fut confirmé!), il a construit sa propre voiture à réaction (560 Km/h!!) et un véhicule propulsé à l'hydrogène!

A noter que de nombreux témoins clefs ont reçu des menaces de mort... Cela semble donc gêner quelqu'un!

Des reporters filmèrent des choses volantes, la nuit, autour de la base et du lac Groom qui se trouve à proximité! Il faut aussi noter que les "black programs" (projets ultra-secrets!) ont un budget annuel de 35 milliards de $!!! En tout cas, certains des objets volants observés volaient à 16000 km/h, soit 13 fois la vitesse du son! Pour couronner le tout, Lazar affirme que ceux qui travaillent au S4 portent des badges portent le nom de code Maj... Or, une unité portant le nom de "Majestic 12", spécialisée deans la recherches des ovnis, fut créée par le président des USA en 1947...

Après cette petite mise au point, revenons en à la célèbre affaire "Roswell"!

Cette affaire débuta le 2 Juillet 1947 quand un éleveur de moutons, Max Brazel, entendit une sourde explosion suivie d'un orage électrique! Brazel, qui exploitait la ferme Foster, située à 120 Km environ au nord-ouest de Roswell et à 32 Km au sud-est de Corona, ne se formalisa pas... Le lendemain, en allant vérifier une pompe à eau, il découvrit une zone d'un kilomètre de long, jonchée de fragments d'un matériau très spécial (on pouvait le plier mais il reprenait toujours sa forme initiale!); il trouva aussi de petites poutrelles, ultra légères mais incassables, remplient de symboles d'une couleur lavande très inhabituelle...

Le dimanche 6 Juillet, Brazel chargea des débris dans sa camionnette et les amena au bureau du shériff de Roswell, George Wilcox. Ce dernier contacta la base militaire. Le commandant Jesse Marcel, qui vint examiner les débris, ne reconnu en rien le matériau (et c'était là un avis de spécialiste car il était chargé des renseignements dans la seule unité au monde dotée de bombes atomiques!!).

Très vite, le commandant de la base, le colonel William Blanchard, donna l'odre d'aller sur place et de tout ramasser... L'officier Sheridan Cavitt, du service du contre-espionnage, se joint à eux...

Après en avoir ramassé pas mal, ils rentrèrent! En chemin, Jesse Marcel fit un crochet par chez lui et montra des débris à sa famille et surtout à son fils (dernière personne vivante à les avoir touchés!)... Dès le lendemain, la zone fut bouclée... Le lieutenant Haunt diffusa un communiqué comme quoi un ovni s'était crashé!

Entre-temps, Jesse Marcel recevait l'ordre de transporter en B-29 les débris jusqu'à la base de Wright Field (aujourd'hui la Wright Patterson Air Force Base)... Il fit escale à Fort Worth, au Texas, base de la VIIIème Air Force! Le commandant de cette base fut contacté par la général Clemens McMullen qui lui demanda d'inventer une histoire pour "dégonfler" cette affaire! A sa descente d'avion, on demanda à Marcel de ne rien dire sur l'ovni et il posa sur une photo avec des restes de ballon-sonde... Cette nouvelle version fut divulguée vers 17 h...

A noter que toutes ces informations, et sûrement plus encore, se trouvent dans le livre "Crash at Corona" de Stanton Friedman (un physicien nucléaire féru d'ufologie).

Stanton discuta avec l'entreprenneur des pompes funèbres locales qui lui parla de questions posées par l'armée au sujet de la conservation de petits corps... Une infirmière, qui avait vu une autopsie d'un des E.T., parla de "petits corps qui sentaient mauvais"... Après plusieurs discussions avec le croque-mort, elle disparut subitement de la circulation... pour se rendre en Angleterre... Ayant essayé de reprendre contact avec elle, son courrier lui fut retourné avec la mention "décédée"...

Il faut également parler de la fameuse autopsie de l'extraterrestre (souvenez vous des émissions avec ce bon vieux Pradel). Scoop ou bluff?

Un producteur artistique londonien nommé Ray Santilli a acheté ces images (sur lesquelles il était tombé par hasard!) pour un million de francs... Mais Santilli a refusé de donner un morceau de la pellicule pour la dater, affirmant que Kodak avait fait pour lui les tests (et la société a confimé que le film avait 50 ans!). Mais, d'après Graham Birdsall rédacteur en chef de UFO Magazine), qui a enquété, personne n'est au courant, chez Kodak, de ces fameux tests effectués! Mystère, donc...

Le film a été tourné par Jack Barnett (c'est un pseudo!) en 1947. Mais des imperfections sont présentes: normallement, le film aurait du être tourné en couleurs. De plus, l'image est nulle et tremble: le cameraman a du filmer à la main... Bref: le travail est très en dessous de la qualité imposée alors par l'armée! Aussi, à moins de pouvoir officiellement examiner la pellicule originale, le débat n'est n'est pas prêt d'être clos!

Dernière minute (5/7/97) : l'affaire rebondit! Je viens de voir sur le télétexte qu'un chercheur américain d'une Université en Californie à annoncé détenir la preuve d'une présence extraterrestre à Roswell en 1947. En effet, il a analysé un objet sensé provenir du fameux crash et aurait décelé des anomalies dans les noyaux atomiques. Or, de telles anomalies sont impossibles sur Terre... Enfin une preuve tangible?

Voici un extrait du livre "Mythologies" de Roland Barthes. Au premier abord, vous vous dites qu'il n'y a pas de rapport entre nos amis les extraterrestres et l'écrivain intellectuel Roland Barthes... Et pourtant! Cet extrait à toute sa place ici puisqu'il parle du mythe des martiens! Toutefois, ce texte date de 1954-56 (la publication de l'ouvrage date de 1957); aussi, vous remarquerez certaines allusions, relatives à cette période, qui peuvent dérouter un peu... Mais n'oubliez pas qu'il s'agit de la période de la guerre froide...

MARTIENS

Le mystère des soucoupes volantes à d'abord été tout terrestre: on supposait que la soucoupe venait de l'inconnu soviétique, de ce monde aussi privé d'intentions claires qu'une autre planète. Et déjà cette forme de mythe contenait en germe son développement planétaire; si la soucoupe d'engin soviétique est devenue si facilement engin de martien, c'est qu'en fait la mythologie occidentale attribue au monde communiste l'altérité même d'une planète: l'U.R.S.S. est un monde intermédiaire entre la Terre et Mars.

Seulement, dans son devenir, le mystérieux a changé de sens, on est passé du mythe du combat à celui de jugement. Mars en effet, jusqu'à nouvel ordre, est impartial: Mars vient sur Terre pour juger la Terre, mais avant de condamner, Mars veut observer, entendre. La grande contestation URSS-USA est donc désormais sentie comme un état coupable, parce qu'ici le danger est sans mesure avec le bon droit; d'où le recours mythique à un regard céleste, assez puissant pour intimider les deux parties. Les analystes de l'avenir pourront expliquer les éléments figuratifs de cette puissance, les thèmes oniriques qui la composent: la rondeur de l'engin, le lisse de son métal, cet état superlatif du monde qui serait une matière sans couture; a contrario, nous comprenons mieux tout ce qui dans notre champs perceptif participe au thème du Mal: les angles, les plans irréguliers, le bruit, le discontinu des surfaces. Tout cela a déjà été minutieusement posé dans les romans d'anticipation, dont la psychose martienne ne fait que reprendre à la lettre les descriptions. [...]

En direct d'Internet...

There's no argument that 50 years ago this summer, something fell from the sky near Roswell, N.M. But exactly what it was has been debated almost from the moment it was found.

About noon July 8, 1947, Army Air Corps personnel from the 509th Bomb Group, at that time the world's only atomic-armed bomber force, said it was a crashed "flying disk" -- an unidentified flying object. Later that day, an Air Corps general brought in an expert who said no, it was a weather balloon. In 1994, the U.S. Air Force said it probably was the remains of a top-secret project.

But through the years, some individuals have insisted that whatever was retrieved wasn't from this world.

Whether it's the truth or a pipedream of conspiracy-fearing paranoids, the Roswell Incident, as the story has come to be known, is a part of late-20th-century U.S. folklore. At best, it might be an amusing look at how people can be fooled by misinformation. But at worst, the story could be the nightmare side of the American dream: the government not only keeping knowledge of one of the most significant discoveries in history from its own people, but engaging in a half-century-long campaign of denial, deceit and cover-up to do so.

Simply stated, the theory spawned by the Roswell Incident generally is that a spacecraft from another planet indeed crashed near that small city. Supposedly, all debris from the wreck, the damaged craft itself and the bodies of its alien occupants were seized by Air Corps personnel. At least some of the material then was secretly shipped to Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson AFB) in Dayton, Ohio, where the bodies were kept frozen in a mysterious building known as Hangar 18.

The legend of Roswell has helped spawn such television shows as "The X-Files" and "Dark Skies," served as a major component of the plot of the 1996 movie "Independence Day" and occupies hundreds of thousands of megabytes of computer space linked by the Internet.

The incident also is why Roswell will be holding UFO Encounter '97, the community's third annual out-of-this- world celebration, July 1-6.

Deon Crosby, director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, is helping organize the festival. Her husband, Stan, originally launched the celebration.

"He got ticked because the (1994 made-for-television) movie 'Roswell' was filmed in Bisbee, Ariz.," Mrs. Crosby told the San Antonio Express-News by phone. "He said everyone except Roswell was making money off this. He went to some of the city leaders to see if we couldn't get something started. They didn't offer any help. He said, 'Fine', and got a committee together to do it."

Mrs. Crosby said she expected about 20,000 visitors at the '97 extravaganza.

"Many more than that and we'll run out of chairs," she said of the community of about 50,000 residents.

Despite the amount of attention the Roswell Incident now receives, the story was only a footnote in UFO lore for more than 30 years. As Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt noted in their 1991 book, "UFO Crash at Roswell," it wasn't until about 1980 that Jesse A. Marcel, who'd been the intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) in 1947, told his story in several published interviews.

Marcel, who died in 1986, insisted that what had been discovered had to have been produced on another planet.

According to the Randle-Schmitt book and other accounts, a Corona, N.M.-area rancher named W.W. "Mac" Brazel had heard an explosion during a thunderstorm sometime between July 2 and 4. The next day, he came upon metallic debris scattered across a pasture about 75 miles northwest of Roswell.

Puzzled by his find, Brazel collected some of the material, which reportedly contained pieces of thin metal, wire, I-beams, parchment-like paper and lead-like foil. He showed these to some neighbors, who suggested he take the samples to Roswell.

Eventually, Brazel went into town, where Sheriff George A. Wilcox is said to have told him to call the RAAF. Marcel and member of the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) responded to the call and accompanied Brazel back to his ranch.

At the site, Marcel and the CIC agent collected as much of the material as their two vehicles would carry. They reportedly tested the metal and found that although it was very thin, they were unable to bend, tear or burn it.

On the way back to the RAAF, the stories go, Marcel stopped at his house and showed the material to his wife and son.

After a quick examination of the debris and a discussion by base personnel the morning of July 8, the story went public.

Walter Haut now is 75 years old and lives in Roswell. In 1947, 1st Lt. Haut was the RAAF's public information officer, and he wrote the press release announcing the discovery.

"It (the release) was mine to a degree," Haut said by phone, adding that he never saw the material Marcel had collected. "Col. (William) Blanchard (commander of the 509th) pretty much gave me what he wanted. He said what he wanted in the release, then left it up to me to write it.

"My involvement was when Mac Brazel brought some of the material into town that got into the hands of the military. The whole thing kind of snowballed."

That afternoon, the Roswell Daily Record carried a banner headline announcing: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region." Although about 30 other newspapers across the country printed the story that day, microfilm records of San Antonio's afternoon papers of that era -- the Evening News and the Light -- don't mention it.

Haut noted that the time was ripe for a UFO story to receive big play.

"This was not the first flying saucer in our newspaper," he said. "Several weeks prior, the media started talking about (UFOs), that someone had seen something flying across the sky somewhere in the country. (When assigned to do the press release) I thought, oh, no. I felt we shouldn't get involved in something so unearthly."

Several years ago, Haut founded the UFO museum when an acquaintance suggested Roswell residents were in "an unenviable position" and should establish such a facility.

"I'm not really sorry now (that the Roswell Incident occurred)," Haut said, adding that he didn't know if a UFO had crashed or not. "It pretty well died for many, many years. Recently, there's been a lot more interest raised."

While the flap was swirling over Haut's press release, a crashed UFO -- along with a number of alien bodies -- allegedly had been discovered some distance away from the Brazel ranch. Supposedly, either an explosion had occurred aboard the craft or it and another spaceship had collided in midair, causing the debris to rain down on the pasture before the crippled vehicle crashed. Air Corps personnel are said to have quickly sealed this second site and carted off the ship.

Sheila Corn and her husband, Hub, now raise sheep and cattle on the ranch where in another book, "The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell," which was published in 1994, Randle and Schmitt claim the craft was found.

"We did not know anything about it. ... We bought the property where it was found in 1976 and didn't hear about it till May of '96," Mrs. Corn said by phone. "When we first started, we couldn't believe it. People have just come and come. It's been real interesting. We've probably had close to 1,000 people come."

The Corns charge $15 per person (children under age 13 are free) to tour the site, which is about 25 miles north of Roswell.

"We like to say we didn't come forward and say, 'Hey, we have the site,'" Mrs. Corn said. "The (International UFO) Museum was bringing people out. We weren't getting anything, but we'd have to go open the gates and wait around till people were through looking. In November (1996), we finally decided that if anyone's going to get any money off this, it should be us."

After word of his discovery was made public in 1947, Marcel was ordered to load the material he'd collected aboard one of the 509th's B-29 Superfortress bombers and take it to Wright Field -- with a stop first at 8th Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth.

It was at the Fort Worth Army Air Field that the UFO story originally was punctured by a balloon.

San Antonian Irving "Newt" Newton, 76, a 26-year Air Force veteran who's now a stockbroker, was the only meteorologist working at the base's busy flight operations office the afternoon of July 8. Suddenly, the warrant officer received a call from an assistant to Gen. Roger Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force.

"One of his aides called me and told me to get over there, and I told him I couldn't do that," Newton said recently at his Northeast Side home. "Then the general himself called me and said, 'Get your ass over here.' And being in the military, I got over there."

Arriving at Ramey's office, Newton found the general, a couple of his aides, Marcel and about three newspaper reporters looking at debris scattered across the floor. Newton said he immediately recognized the material as a crashed weather balloon with a Rawin attached. The Rawin allowed observers to track a balloon's progress with radar.

"The general suspicioned that that wasn't a flying saucer and that it probably was some kind of meteorological equipment," Newton said. "He'd suspicioned that, so they didn't call me over there and tell me not to identify it as a flying saucer or anything else. He'd just called me as an authority on weather equipment. And as soon as I walked in, I saw it and I knew what it was immediately. And I told them at that time, I says, 'If that's not what I'm telling you it is, I'll eat it without salt or pepper, because I know exactly what that is.'"

Newton said he was very familiar with the Rawin devices.

"I didn't personally send them up, because we had special Rawin crews that did the actual work -- enlisted people," Newton said. "But we used the product that came back. And it's a big old kite. It looks like a great big kite about 44 inches long, I guess, in all directions. I like to describe it as a child's jack, where you throw the jack and bounce a ball, but with aluminum foil between all legs. The reason for this is when it's going in the air, aloft on the balloon, no matter how it wiggles or flops around, it still sends the same signal back to the radar that's following it."

Newton said the material in Ramey's office was badly mangled.

"Imagine when this thing comes down in the desert and gets pushed around in the tumbleweed and everything," he said. "It was a mess -- just a bunch of raggedy tinfoil things and sticks. It had
little sticks in there -- they look like they're balsa wood and they're about a quarter-inch by a half-inch.

"And then the neoprene, the remnants of the balloon. The best thing I can think of, it looked like little cow pies, because this rubber material ... it had been laying in the desert, in the sun and it had all shriveled up and got black."

In later years, Marcel claimed the material displayed in Ramey's office wasn't what he'd actually brought from Roswell. But Newton says that day, he told a different story.

"Marcel ... he says, 'Now this is what I found.' He told me that," Newton said. "'This is what I found in the field.' And then he'd come around with those little sticks, which had some hieroglyphic-like little marks on it. 'Look at that, look at that, boy,' he says, 'you can see that's alien writing, you can see that. That's nothing from the United States or from this world.'

"As it turned out, what that was ... was a transfer of some child's toy's tape. They had trouble getting that ... tinfoil to stick on those kites. So they got this tape from a toy store and spread it on there, and it had these designs in the tape and it transferred onto that wood. That's all it was, it wasn't no foreign hieroglyphics."

Ramey's meeting with Irving, Marcel and the reporters received front-page play the next day. The Roswell Daily Record announced: "Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer." In somewhat more sedate tones, the San Antonio Express informed its readers that, "Flying Disc Turns Out To Be Weather Device." After that, the story virtually disappeared for three decades.

Once it resurfaced, Roswell started becoming a legend. Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore were two of the first people to investigate the happenings of 1947, and their 1980 book, "The Roswell Incident," included references to alien bodies allegedly being shipped from New Mexico to Wright Field. Subsequent reports specified the remains were on ice in a building called Hangar 18.<P>

These days, Wright-Patterson AFB spokeswoman Helen Kavanaugh spends part of her time answering questions about Hangar 18.

"We always get a bunch of calls whenever there's something new on TV about it (Roswell)," she said by phone. "I'm glad you mentioned the 50th anniversary. Now I know I'll spend the summer fielding these calls."

Kavanaugh denied any UFO-related items ever were shipped to the base.

"No, we do not and never have (had any alien bodies or extraterrestrial materials)," she said. "In fact, all the documents that were done here relating to UFO studies went to the National Archives, so there's really nothing here anymore relating at all to UFOs."

Kavanaugh explained that the 1950s and '60s Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs, was conducted at Wright-Patterson.

As for Hangar 18, Kavanaugh said it's a myth.

"It is a red brick building that was a test facility for engines that simulated high altitudes, so it was refrigerated," she said. "That's why it's a cold building. It's one of a series of Building 18s that go A, B, C. I think its actual name is Building 18F. It's a kind of square, red brick building, not a hangar with the dome- shaped top associated with hangars."

While the interest in Roswell has grown, two official reports have been issued. In 1994, the Air Force concluded the item found indeed was a balloon, most likely one designed for the formerly top-secret Project Mogul, in which devices had been sent aloft in an attempt to determine if the Soviet Union had exploded any atomic weapons.

And in 1995, the Government Accounting Office, at the request of U.S. Rep. Steve Schiff, R-N.M., probed the Roswell Incident. The GAO said it could find no evidence that anything more than a balloon had been recovered near Roswell.

However, the GAO noted it couldn't find the records for outgoing messages from the RAAF from October 1946 through December 1949.

Also in 1995, a program allegedly containing scenes of an autopsy of an alien being supposedly recovered during the Roswell Incident was shown on television. Whether the scenes were real or clever fakery has helped keep the Roswell debate raging.

En prime, je vous donne le texte de la chanson "Hangar 18" de Megadeth (issue de l'album "Rust in Peace"):

Welcome to our fortress tall
Take some time to show you around
Impossible to break these walls
For you see the steel is much too strong
Computer banks to rule the world
Instruments to sight the stars

Possibly I've see to much
Hangar 18 I know too much

Foreign life forms inventory
Suspended state of cryogenics
Selective amnesia's the story
Believed foretold but who'd suspect
The military intelligence
Two words combined that can't make sense

Possibly I've seen to much
Hangar 18 I know too much

A la prochaine et n'oubliez pas: "The truth is out there!"