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133 read scientific report could hardly have done the trick. But exactly what carried the day has yet to be hinted at. Given that members of some special security team might well have been sitting on the edges of their chairs in Washing- ton at the time the first word was received of the New Mexico crashes, how was it that news of the recovery of wreckage from the sheep ranch was allowed to get out via an official Army Air Forces news release? Was it a slip-up? Or might it have been the inevitable consequence of an unusually secretive process? The news that a system existed for detecting alien crashes and then controlling all information about them would, of necessity, have to be kept secret from almost everyone in the government as well as outside it. Otherwise, the importance of the subject of alien spacecraft could become common knowl- edge, and the chances of maintaining control would be seri- ously diminished. That the very idea was given credence had to be kept secret. Such a system involves and illustrates the nature of the intelligence practice of compartmentalization. To operate ef- fectively, especially vital information must be kept in a special "compartment," access to which is limited to those who have a specific, demonstrable "need to know" that particular informa- tion in order to do their jobs. Everyone else, no matter what their exalted rank or position, does not qualify, regardless of the security clearances they may possess. The situation of former U.S. senator Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.) offers a prime example. Even though he was a general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, he was unable to break through the wall of secrecy surrounding the government's UFO information and activity. This clearly upset him, but not even his considerable influence was sufficient to provide him with a need to know that particu- lar category of sensitive information. It is quite possible that not a single person at Roswell Army Air Field had a need to know about the nature of the flying saucers. And so, when Marcel and Cavitt returned from the Foster ranch with a lot of material like the odd samples Marcel THE GREAT COVER-UP