By MARTHA MENDOZA
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A new Air Force report concludes that
the ``alien bodies'' that were supposedly covered up along with the
crash of a flying saucer in Roswell in 1947 were actually
crash-test dummies used in parachute experiments, a UFO skeptic
says.
Air Force spokeswoman Gloria Cales said Friday that a follow-up
report to the 1994 debunking of the so-called Roswell Incident will
be released Tuesday, but she refused to discuss details.
However, a publisher of the Skeptics UFO Newsletter said he has
seen the report and it concludes that dummies used in high-altitude
parachute tests in the late 1950s were the basis of reports of
alien bodies.
``The theory is that some of these reports of alien bodies might
have been mistaken memories of some experiments that the Air Force
conducted in New Mexico in the late 1950s, 10 years later, using
dummies to test high-altitude parachutes,'' said Philip Klass,
publisher of the Skeptics UFO Newsletter in Washington.
Klass said he has spoken at length with the report's author, Air
Force historian Capt. James McAndrew. McAndrew refused to comment.
UFO believers dismissed the report's suggestions.
``I'm sure I saw those aliens,'' said Frank Kaufmann, 80, a
retired government intelligence agent. He and several military
colleagues were sent to investigate a falling fireball and found a
crashed spaceship and five dead aliens in July 1947, he said.
``One was thrown out, it was up against the arroyo, one was
half-in, half-out, and the other three were inside,'' Kaufmann
said.
Deon Crosby, director of the International UFO Museum and
Research Center in Roswell, said the explanation is an ``insult to
humankind.'' People don't confuse decades, she said.
Kaufmann said the bodies were hairless, with ash-colored skin,
and were no taller than 5-foot-4. The Air Force report said the
dummies ranged between 5-3 and 6-6.
``If you want to keep costs down, would you go to the trouble of
having eyebrows and wigs put on the dummies?'' Klass said.
The Air Force's 1994 report concluded that the alleged flying
saucer debris was the remains of top-secret high-altitude balloons.
News of the new report comes two weeks before the 50th
anniversary celebration in Roswell, which is expected to attract
thousands of visitors. The theory that an alien spaceship crashed
there has drawn widespread attention and figured, among other
things, in the hit movie ``Independence Day.''