FEAR AND SLEUTHING IN LAS VEGAS

From the arid desert lands of the US to the corridors of power in Washington, DC, the science, technology and politics behind UFOs

- Vaisakh E. Hari

The city of Roswell in New Mexico, United States, sleeps with one foot firmly in the past. On 720 N. Main Street. is a strange saucer-shaped structure—reminiscent of popular depictions of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO)—glimmering red neon at night, very out of touch with its surroundings and, at the same time, very in sync with it. That building is the local McDonald’s, the fast-food joint being just one of the many institutions in the city to celebrate its ‘alien’ heritage. Roswell is speckled with UFO research centres, UFO street-side memorabilia and iconography. All very strange and exotic to outsiders, but seemingly very intimate and rooted to the residents.

Roswell’s claim to fame dates back to June 1947, and the dead heat of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. A rancher in a property roughly 50 miles north of the city woke up to the sight of a massive wreckage, purportedly of an airborne craft of unidentified origins, on his property. He would report the incident to the local sheriff, who later referred it to the commanding officer at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). Jesse Marcel, an RAAF officer, was dispatched to investigate the wreckage. What happened next catapulted the incident into one of the most disputed, litigated conspiracy theories in modern human history.